This night she'll hae but three:
There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton,
And Mary Carmichael, and me.
But indeed, if you had seen that graceful slim figure—clad all in black velvet, with the broad band of gold fringe round the neck—and the small, shapely, smoothly-brushed head above the soft swathes of white muslin—and if you had caught a glimpse of the black eyelashes drooping outward from the curve of the pale cheek—and if you had heard the tender, low voice of Mary Avon, you might have forgotten about the Queen's Maries altogether.
And then Dr. Sutherland: the Laird was determined—in true Scotch fashion—that everybody who could not sing should be goaded to sing.
"Oh, well," said the young man, with a laugh, "you know a student in Germany must sing whether he can or not. And I learned there to smash out something like an accompaniment also."
And he went to the piano without more ado and did smash out an accompaniment. And if his voice was rather harsh?—well, we should have called it raucous in the case of East Wind, but we only called it manly and strenuous when it was Angus Sutherland who sang. And it was a manly song, too—a fitting song for our last night on shore, the words hailing from the green woods of Fuinary, the air an air that had many a time been heard among the western seas. It was the song of the Biorlinn[#] that he sang to us; we could hear the brave chorus and the splash of the long oars:—
Send the biorlinn on careering!
Cheerily and all together—
Ho, ro, clansmen!