ed them. I once had a cigarette, but I didn't
like it."

"Oh, I say, you are comic!" said Kenneth, laughing heartily, and then
restraining himself. "I meant the bagpipes. Donald is our piper."

"Your piper! How--"

Max was going to say horrible, as he recalled one of his pet
abominations, a dirty, kilted and plaided Scotchman, who made night
hideous about the Bloomsbury squares with his chanter and drone.

But he restrained himself, and, as Kenneth led the way here and there
about the little rocky knoll, he kept on talking.

"Donald has a place up in one of the towers--that one at the far corner.
He took to it to play in. He composes dirges and things up there."

"But do you like having a piper?"

"Like it? I don't know. He has always been here. He belongs to us.
There always was a piper to the Clan Mackhai. There, you can see right
up the loch here, and that's where our salmon river empties itself over
those falls. See that hill?"

"Yes."

"That's Ben Doy. You'll like to climb up that. It isn't one of the
highest, but it's four thousand, and jolly steep. There's a loch right
up in it full of little trout."

Boom--boom--boom--boom.

"What's that?"

"That? why, the dinner-gong, of course. Just time to have a wash first.
We don't dress down here. That's what father always says to visitors
who bring bobtails and chokers. Bring a bobtail with you?"

"I brought my dress suit."

"Then, if I were you, I would make it up into a parcel, and send it back
to London. What's your name, did you say?"

"Maxi--Max Blande."

"To be sure! Max Blande, Esquire, Russell Square, per Macbrayne and
Caledonian Railway; and we'll catch a salmon, or you shall, and send to
your father same time. Come on; run. Hi, dogs, then! Bruce, boy!
Chevy, Dirk! Come along, Sneeshing! Oh, man, you can't half run!"

"No," said Max, panting heavily, and nearly falling over a projecting
piece of rock.

"I say, mind! Why, if you fell there, you'd go right down into the sea,
and it would be salt water instead of soup."

Kenneth laughed heartily at his own remark as they ran on, to pause at
the steep slope up to the castle, where the dogs stopped short, as if
well drilled as to the boundaries they were to pass, while the two lads
once more crossed the gloomy ruined quadrangle and entered the house.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE EFFECTS OF THE SAIL.

"Look sharp! Father doesn't like to be kept waiting. Don't stop to do