the night and thus rendered an oblation.

His melody ceased as abruptly as it began. Up he got hastily and stamped
his foot and turned to the table where the bottle lay and cried loud out
for lights, as one might do ashamed of a womanly weakness, and it is the
Highland heart that his friends should like him all the more for that
display of sentiment and shyness to confess it.

"By the Lord, Factor, and it's you have the skill of it!" said the
Provost, in tones of lofty admiration.

"Is't the bit reed?" said the Chamberlain, indifferently. "Your boy
Davie could learn to play better than I in a month's lessons."

"It's no' altogether the playing though," said the Provost slowly,
ruminating as on a problem; "it's that too, but it's more than that;
it's the seizing of the time and tune to play. I'm no great musicianer
myself, though I have tried the trump; but there the now--with the
night like that, and us like this, and all the rest of it--that lilt of
yours--oh, damn! pass the bottle; what for should a man be melancholy?"
He poured some wine and gulped it hurriedly.

"Never heard the beat of it!" said the others. "Give us a rant, Factor,"
and round the table they gathered: the candles were being lit, the
ambrosial night was to begin.

Simon MacTaggart looked round his company--at some with the maudlin tear
of sentiment still on their cheeks, at others eager to escape this soft
moment and make the beaker clink.

"My sorrow!" thought he, "what a corps to entertain! Is it the same
stuff as myself? Is this the best that Sim MacTaggart that knows and
feels things can be doing? And still they're worthy fellows, still I
must be liking them."

"Rants!" he cried, and stood among them tall and straight and handsome,
with lowering dark brows, and his face more pale than they had known it
customarily,--"a little less rant would be the better for us. Take my
word for it, the canty quiet lilt in the evening, and the lights low,
and calm and honest thoughts with us, is better than all the rant and
chorus, and I've tried them both. But heaven forbid that Sim MacTaggart
should turn to preaching in his middle age."

"Faith! and it's very true what you say, Factor," acquiesced some
sycophant.

The Chamberlain looked at him half in pity, half in amusement. "How do
_you_ ken, Bailie?" said he; "what are yearlings at Fa'kirk Tryst?" And
then, waiting no answer to what demanded none, he put the flageolet to
his lips again and bega