a company of sturdy
sun-browned youths and bonnie wholesome lassies as any land or age could
ever show.

"Look at them!" cried the Reverend Harper Freeman, waving his hand
toward the kaleidoscopic gathering. "There's your Dominion Day oration
for you, Mr, Patterson."

"Most of it done in brown, too," chuckled his son, Harper Freeman, Jr.

"Yes, and set in jewels and gold," replied his father.

"You hold over me, Dad!" cried his son. "Here!" he called to Cameron,
who was standing aloof from the others. "Come and meet a brother Scot
and a brother piper, Mr. Sutherland from Zorra, though to your ignorant
Scottish ear that means nothing, but to every intelligent Canadian,
Zorra stands for all that's finest in brain and brawn in Canada."

"And it takes both to play the pipes, eh, Sutherland?" said the M.P.P.

"Oh aye, but mostly wind," said the piper.

"Just like politics, eh, Mr. Patterson?" said the Reverend Harper
Freeman.

"Yes, or like preaching," replied the M.P.P.

"One on you, Dad!" said the irrepressible Fatty.

Meantime Sutherland was warmly complimenting Cameron on his playing.

"You haf been well taught," he said.

"No one taught me," said Cameron. "But we had a famous old piper at home
in our Glen, Macpherson was his name."

"Macpherson! Did he effer play at the Braemar gathering?"

"Yes, but Maclennan beat him."

"Maclennan! I haf heard him." The tone was quite sufficient to classify
the unhappy Maclennan. "And I haf heard Macpherson too. You iss a
player. None of the fal-de-rals of your modern players, but grand and
mighty."

"I agree with you entirely," replied Cameron, his heart warming at
the praise of his old friend of the Glen Cuagh Oir. "But," he added,
"Maclennan is a great player too."

"A great player? Yes and no. He has the fingers and the notes, but he
iss not the beeg man. It iss the soul that breathes through the chanter.
The soul!" Here he gripped Cameron by the arm. "Man! it iss like
praying. A beeg man will neffer show himself in small things, but when
he will be in communion with his Maker or when he will be pouring out
his soul in a pibroch then the beegness of the man will be manifest.
Aye," continued the piper, warming to his theme and encouraged by the
eager sympathy of his listener, "and not only the beegness but the
quality of the soul. A mean man can play the pipes, but he can neffer
be a piper. It iss only a beeg man and a fine man and, I will venture to
say, a go