She sat silent, and gazed dreamily at the undulating countryside, radiant in bloom and light and colour, with old Pilatus in the distance, sentinel of ages. The shimmering sunshine quivered all over it, and the scattered chalets, and orchards pink and white with foam, seemed lulled to sleep in the security of God. Once a priest passed, trudging down the white dusty road beneath; once a peasant, the smoke of his long black cigar hanging in a blue filmy wreath about his round felt hat. Far down in the valley tinkled the music of cow bells. A little stream, crystal clear, trickled at her feet ... flies danced in clouds above the edging rushes. The warm smell of the earth was intoxicating like incense....
She was dimly conscious that her companion was whistling softly. He had a habit of doing this when deep in thought, and she recognised the odd little refrain. She had heard him whistle it a dozen times—queer, uncanny, elusive as the mountain mist, with the mystery of the hills in it, and sorrow, and the spirit of brave men. She glanced at him. She knew that this boy had begun to exercise a strange fascination over her, stronger and more dangerous than she dared to confess even to herself. It was not unnatural, for her life these last three years in that grim, dull old schloss in Hanover had been very lonely. The bud will not mate with the yellow leaf, but spring must call to spring; albeit the mongers of the matrimonial market prattle as they please.
"What is it you whistle, my Gordon?" she asked suddenly. "There are strange things in the air. Has it a story from your Scottish hills?"
He sat back and laughed his gay laugh.
"Yes, it has," he answered. "I'll tell it you, if it won't bore you."
"But no: tell me," she said, and prepared to listen, her chin in her hand.
It was a tune they played on the pipes, he said: and it was a wild, barbaric story of war and the fierce passion of men and the tottering fortunes of his race. Six hundred years ago Castle Niall had been besieged by a neighbouring clan, for the Niall of the day had carried off the daughter of its chief, and held her within his walls. The beleaguered garrison was on the verge of starvation, when to Niall came a dream which told him that deliverance would come from a black chanter which would drop from heaven upon the castle roof. Three times, and three times only, would it play a mysterious tune, which none but the head of the house would be able to awaken from the reed; and in the hour of peril or distress the playing of the chanter would bring salvation. When the morning dawned grey over the castle ramparts, they found, lying on the roof, a black chanter as had been foretold. The chief blew on it with trembling lips, and lo! it played of its own accord. Immediately Niall and his men sallied from the fortress and drove their enemies into the sea.
In the intervening centuries the chanter had again been used and brought deliverance. Its virtue would be efficacious only once more. The strange, haunting air had become the battle charge of his race. It was that which he had been whistling. The last time it had been played, in the sixteenth century, the family piper had caught the air and fixed it indelibly on the scroll of memory. He laughed nervously when he had finished. He was afraid she would treat it lightly. But he had told his tale with an old-world seriousness, and although she had felt inclined to smile when he had ended his recital of it, something in his face restrained her. Instead, she patted his brown curly head.
"Come," she said, "it is late. We must go home."