'Well, well, dad, we'll no quarrel apoot that; maybe I am; but'——
'I tell ye what it iss, Maggie, ye will bide at home when Mr Buchanan comes, and ye'll pehave yourself civilly, or maybe it may pe worse for ye. Angus MacTavish hass turned your head; but he'll get a bit o' my mind maybe yet, as his father hass pefore him mirofer, and that pefore the set o' sun too!'
'O dad, dad! ye'll break my heart, so ye will, inteed and inteed ye will, dad, if it iss in that way ye speak o' Angus.'
'I'll not hef him come apoot my hoose longer! He iss a wanderin' rake; efery sailor iss that, and no fit to make a cood huspand to the like o' you.'
'He iss not a rake! Ye are no speaking the words of truth, father!' exclaimed the girl passionately.
'Efery sailor iss a rake, Maggie; eferypody knows that; and I daresay he iss none better than his neibors.'
Stung by the cruel words, Maggie ran to the dairy, where she shut herself in and burst into a flood of tears. The Highland maid had few hatreds; she had the impulsive almost passionate temperament of every true Celt, but her impulsiveness ran in loving channels. But if she did hate, she hated warmly—also after the Celtic manner. And the one living object for whom she felt undying scorn was this Sandy Buchanan, who knew more of her father's affairs than any man in Inversnow; and whose studied civility to her on all occasions, and attentions more or less marked, were resented by her as she would have resented another man's insults. Perhaps he was all the more despised because he kept at a respectful distance when Angus was at home; a peculiarity that Maggie attributed to a certain dread of physical consequences, that was not to be wondered at in a weak-legged milksop fellow like him. But whenever the Duke's yacht was away, Mr Sandy danced attendance upon her assiduously, insisting upon seeing her safely home from the kirk on Sunday evenings, and otherwise thrusting his obnoxious presence upon her in ways which she considered offensive.
And sure enough, just as the sun was veering round to the west, the piper was seated at the table of his best parlour with a bottle of whisky and glasses, and a plate of Maggie's crisp oatmeal bannocks between him and the detested Sandy Buchanan, whose breath blew forth gales of peppermint—an odour that Maggie always associated with him, and put the worst construction upon—as he listened patiently to the rather confused statement of the piper's grievance. Sandy tried honestly to look at the case from the piper's stand-point; but put in any form, it appeared that if any legal action was to be taken the decision could hardly take the only form which would satisfy the irate piper—namely the immediate arrest, trial, conviction, and imprisonment of Mr MacTavish for an undefined number of months in the county jail. Sandy gathered that the piper had succeeded in hooking a 'cood seven-pound grilse;' that while he was landing the same, Mr MacTavish appeared on the scene threatening to report him to the Duke for poaching; words passed between them, not of a complimentary nature, ending ultimately in one of two catastrophes—the piper could not clearly remember which—either the game-keeper had seized the piper's rod with result of breaking it to pieces, or the piper had broken his fishing-rod over the game-keeper's back; and then a struggle had ensued, the upshot of which was that the latter walked off with the 'grilse' and a black eye, while the former did the like with his shattered fishing-rod and empty basket, each vowing to lay the matter before 'the shirra.'
The Sheriff, as represented by Sandy Buchanan the fiscal's clerk, thought, much to the delight of the piper, that he had good ground for an action for assault against Mr MacTavish; and presently father and daughter (poor Maggie was compelled to remain in the room to hear the brutal manner in which he, a Cameron, had been treated by a MacTavish) were thrown into a state of mental confusion by the adroit manner in which Sandy now addressing the piper as 'our client,' now as 'the plaintiff;' both of which phrases the piper received and acknowledged in the light of a personal compliment, and also by liberal but not very coherent allusion to Act of Queen Victoria this, and chapter of Act Queen Victoria that; all tending to prove the piper the most abused and injured of men.
In the midst of the conference Angus MacTavish appeared at the door. He indiscreetly opened it and looked in without knocking. The piper, who was feeling at the moment keenly alive to his own importance, with the delightful sense that he had matter to bring before the 'shirra' (as he called the Sheriff), looked up and frowned, fingering his glass of whisky the while.