I sang at last in mockery.
“Come, Phadric,” I cried, “you are as bad as Peter McAlpin’s lassie, Fiona, with the pipes!”
Both men laughed lightly. On the last Sabbath, old McAlpin had held a prayer-meeting in his little house in the “street,” in Balliemore of Iona. At the end of his discourse he told his hearers that the voice of God was terrible only to the evil-doer, but beautiful to the righteous man, and that this voice was even now among them, speaking in a thousand ways, and yet in one way. And at this moment, that elfin granddaughter of his, who was in the byre close by, let go upon the pipes with so long and weary a whine that the collies by the fire whimpered, and would have howled outright but for the Word of God that still lay open on the big stool in front of old Peter. For it was in this way that the dogs knew when the Sabbath readings were over, and there was not one that would dare to bark or howl, much less rise and go out, till the Book was closed with a loud, solemn bang. Well, again and again that weary quavering moan went up and down the room, till even old McAlpin smiled, though he was fair angry with Fiona. But he made the sign of silence, and began: “My brethren, even in this trial it may be the Almighty has a message for us——,” when at that moment Fiona was kicked by a cow, and fell against the board with the pipes, and squeezed out so wild a wail that McAlpin started up and cried, in the Lowland way that he had won out of his wife, “Hoots, havers, an’ a’! come oot o’ that, ye deil’s spunkie!”
So it was this memory that made Phadric and Ivor smile. Suddenly Ivor began, with a long rising and falling cadence, an old Gaelic rune of the Faring of the Tide:
“Athair, A mhic, A Spioraid Naoimh,
Biodh an Tri-aon leinn, a la’s a dh’ oidhche;
S’ air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann!”
“O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Be the Three-in-One with us day and night,
On the crested wave, when waves run high!”