“Aye, yon's a piper!” he said at length with emphasis. “Yon's a piper!”
“I only wish I had discovered him in time for a competition,” said Fatty regretfully.
“Aye,” said Sutherland. “Yon's a piper worth playing against.”
And very brave and gallant young Cameron looked as Tim swung his team through the fence and up to the platform under the trees where the great ones of the people were standing in groups. They were all there, Patterson the M.P.P., and Dr. Kane the Opposition candidate, Reeve Robertson, for ten years the Municipal head of his county, Inspector Grant, a little man with a massive head and a luminous eye, Patterson's understudy and generally regarded as his successor in Provincial politics, the Reverend Harper Freeman, Methodist minister, tall and lank, with shrewd kindly face and a twinkling eye, the Reverend Alexander Munro, the Presbyterian minister, solid and sedate, slow to take fire but when kindled a very furnace for heat. These, with their various wives and daughters, such as had them, and many others less notable but no less important, constituted a sort of informal reception committee under Fatty Freeman's general direction and management. And here and there and everywhere crowds of young men and maidens, conspicuous among the latter Isa MacKenzie and her special friends, made merry with each other, as brave and gallant a company of sturdy sun-browned youths and bonnie wholesome lassies as any land or age could ever show.
“Look at them!” cried the Reverend Harper Freeman, waving his hand toward the kaleidoscopic gathering. “There's your Dominion Day oration for you, Mr, Patterson.”
“Most of it done in brown, too,” chuckled his son, Harper Freeman, Jr.
“Yes, and set in jewels and gold,” replied his father.
“You hold over me, Dad!” cried his son. “Here!” he called to Cameron, who was standing aloof from the others. “Come and meet a brother Scot and a brother piper, Mr. Sutherland from Zorra, though to your ignorant Scottish ear that means nothing, but to every intelligent Canadian, Zorra stands for all that's finest in brain and brawn in Canada.”
“And it takes both to play the pipes, eh, Sutherland?” said the M.P.P.
“Oh aye, but mostly wind,” said the piper.