"I have that same," said the blind man, with his face to the door. "Your friends, Coll?"
"Two pipers of the neighbourhood," Rory made answer. "It was for no piping we came here, but by the accident of the chase. Still and on, if pipes are here, piping there might be."
"So be it," cried Coll; "but I must go back to my cattle till night comes. Get you to the playing with Paruig Dali, and I'll find you here when I come back." And with that he turned about and went off.
Parig put down the ale and cake before the two men, and "Welcome you are," said he.
They ate the stranger's bite, and lipped the stranger's cup, and then, "Whistle 'The Macraes' March,' my fair fellow," said the blind man.
"Your tongue tells that. A fair man has aye a soft bit in his speech, like the lapping of milk in a cogie; and a black one, like your friend there, has the sharp ring of a thin burn in frost running into an iron pot. 'The Macraes' March,' _laochain_."
Rory put a pucker on his mouth and played a little of the fine tune.
"So!" said the blind man, with his head to a side, "you had your lesson. And you, my Strathlachlan boy without beard, do you ken 'Muinntir a' Ghlinne so'?"
"How ken ye I'm Strathlachlan and beardless?" asked Gilian.
"Strathlachlan by the smell of herring-scale from your side of the house (for they told me yesterday the gannets were flying down Strathlachlan way, and that means fishing), and you have no beard I know, but in what way I know I do not know." Gilian had the _siubhal_ of the pibroch but begun when the blind man stopped him.
"You have it," he said, "you have it in a way, the Macarthur's way, and that's not my way. But, no matter, let us to our piping."
The three men sat them down on three stools on the clay floor, and the blind man's pipes passed round between them.
"First," said Paruig (being the man of the house, and to get the vein of his own pipes)--"first I'll put on them 'The Vaunting.'" He stood to his shanks, a lean old man and straight, and the big drone came nigh on the black rafters. He filled the bag at a breath and swung a lover's arm round about it. To those who know not the pipes, the feel of the bag in the oxter is a gaiety lost. The sweet round curve is like a girl's waist; it is friendly and warm in the crook of the elbow and against a man's side, and to press it is to bring laughing or tears.