lads had been to her; and now the last of them was going away from her.

"Do you know," said Janet, quickly, to her cousin across the table,
"that it is said no piper in the West Highlands can play 'Lord Lovat's
Lament' like our Donald?"

"Oh yes, he plays it very well; and he has got a good step," Macleod
said. "But you will tell him to play no more Laments to-night. Let him
take to strathspeys if any of the lads come up after bringing back the
boat. It will be time enough for him to make a Lament for me when I am
dead. Come, mother, have you no message for Norman Ogilvie?"

The old lady had nerved herself again, though her hands were still
trembling.

"I hope he will come back with you, Keith," she said.

"For the shooting? No, no, mother. He was not fit for the shooting about
here: I have seen that long ago. Do you think he could lie for an hour
in a wet bog? It was up at Fort William I saw him last year, and I said
to him, 'Do you wear gloves at Aldershot?' His hands were as white as
the hands of a woman."

"It is no woman's hand you have, Keith," his cousin said; "it is a
soldier's hand."

"Yes," said he, with his face flushing, "and if I had had Norman
Ogilvie's chance--"

But he paused. Could he reproach this old dame, on the very night of his