The game-keeper sat for only a short time after his friend was gone; he gave utterance to a low hard laugh as the piper disappeared, and then relapsed into sulky silence. Presently he said, rising to leave: 'I'd petter pay ye for my share o' the whusky, Mrs MacTonald.'
'Na; that can remain. Ye will pe here the day after to-morrow or so, I daresay, to make it up.'
'Take the money,' said Mr MacTavish firmly; 'he will peg my pardon pefore I drink another drop in his company.'
'A bad job!' said poor Betty, with tears in her eyes, as she slowly counted out to him the change.
On the afternoon of the same day, Maggie Cameron the piper's daughter was in her father's dairy busily at work. The piper's cottage and small farm-steading stood white and solitary at the mouth of Glen Heath, barely half a mile from Inversnow. The score of sheep that strayed about the glen with the red mark J. C. branded on their woolly sides belonged to the piper; so also did the three or four cows that stood cooling their feet in the heat of the day, in the peat-brown burn that coursed through the heart of the glen past the piper's fields and garden, to the loch. He was in a moderate way a prosperous man, and after the manner of men conscious of a bigger balance than their neighbours at the local bank, he thought he had a right to dogmatise on occasions. Folks who knew the piper knew that whoever ultimately was lucky enough to win the hand of his only daughter Maggie, would not take her dowerless; and that the dower would be something by no means to be sneezed at, was evident when the Inversnow intellect began to reckon on its finger-ends the various sources of the piper's income. There was first and foremost the farm; the piper's crops were ever the earliest and the heaviest; his mutton was always prime, and the piper knew well when and to what market to send. Nor on the Duke's whole estate were better turnips grown. Then what milk was to be compared to that which came from the piper's byre; and as for the piper's butter—churned by Maggie's own pretty hands—why, better butter was not to be had in or out of the parish for love or money. Besides which, the piper's white cottage, built on the slope facing the loch on one side and looking towards the glen on the other, within a few minutes' walk of the best scenery, the best shooting, and the best fishing in South-western Scotland, fetched—well, Inversnow did not know how much per month. Let to the 'gentry' during spring, summer, and autumn of every year, it was in itself another tap of gold flowing into the piper's pockets.
For several months in each year the Duke entertained guests at Inversnow Castle; and it was the piper's duty, as it was his pleasure, to march daily (Sundays excepted, and he grudged Sundays) for two hours to and fro in the hall of the castle while the Duke and his guests dined, the sonorous bagpipes discoursing appetising and digestatory music; and he was indeed a mean or thoughtless guest who departed without remembering the piper in some shape tangible to the piper. Dearly he loved his money. Nor was he a man likely to let money readily slip from his grasp when he once fingered it, and no man in Inversnow was more fertile in resources for adding to his store. But dearly as he loved gold, dearly as he loved his sheep, his cattle, and horses, his dram and his bagpipes, his one primary treasure was his winsome daughter Maggie. Rough he might be, but beneath the hard shell was a true human heart that beat warmly and tenderly towards her.
Maggie stood, as has been said, busily at work on the clean paved floor of the dairy, her burnished milk-pans full of creamy richness, arranged on shelves along the walls. The dairy was cool and shady, and the sweet fragrance of the fresh milk mingled sweetly with odour of late honeysuckles and fuchsias clambering in at the window. Between the leaves of honeysuckle there was to be seen from the window, far off across the sloping fields, a peep of the loch, the blue sky, and the heather-clad hills in the distance. The door was open, and the afternoon light fell upon no more pleasant sight than the bright shapely Highland lassie, whose sleeves were tucked up to the elbow, her dress pinned behind, while her hands were deftly shaping butter with the aid of a pair of wooden 'clatters' into tempting rounded pats, each pat being dropped, by a quick graceful turn of her skilful hands, into a dish of clear spring-water beside her. Maggie hummed in a sweet low treble as she worked, an old Gaelic air that had a touch of melancholy in it, her sole audience the piper's monstrous bull-dog, that lay all her length in the sunshine asleep on the threshold. Presently the formidable-looking animal raised her head, pricked her ears and growled; then, at the sound of footsteps, rose and bounded down the path; and Maggie, as she paused in singing, heard a well-known voice cry: 'Down, Diana; down, I tell ye; keep down!' The Highland girl went on with her work, with perhaps a tinge of crimson shewing through the sun-browned face, while a man's voice rang out 'Maggie!' from the kitchen door, and then the steps turned to the open dairy door.
'Well, Angus,' Maggie said in a tone of surprise that was hardly meant to be taken as real; 'and iss it you again? I thought you said yesterday that the yacht was going to meet some of the castle-folks at Sheepfell?'
'The Teuk changed his mind, or had a telegram or something. But are ye not glad to see me, Maggie, that ye won't shake hands wi' a body?'
'Deed and I am fery glad to see yourself, Angus, and well ye ken that; but my hands are wet wi' the watter and the butter; and indeed ye must excuse me.'