ck again, right and left on the side, ladies' chain on the head,
right hand to partner and grand right and left, as neat as you please,
and best of all, when all the ladies circled to the left, and all the
gentlemen circled to the right, no one was quicker to see what was the
upshot of it all; and before big John told them to "Form the basket,"
mother whispered to father that she knew what was coming, and father
told mother she was a wonderful woman for a Methodist. "Turn the basket
inside out," "Circle to the left--to the centre and back, circle to the
right," "Swing the girl with the hole in her sock," "Promenade once and
a half around on the head, once and a half around on the side," "Turn
'em around to place again and balance all!" "Clap! Clap! Clap!"

Mother wanted to quit then, but dear me no! no one would let her, they
would dance the "Break-down" now, and leave out the third figure, and
as a special inducement, they would dance "Dan Tucker." She would stay
for "Dan Tucker." Peter came in for "Tucker," an extra man being
necessary, and then off they went into

Clear the way for old Dan Tucker,
He's too late to come to supper.

Two by two they circled around, Peter in the centre singing--

Old Dan Tucker
Was a fine old man--

Then back to the right--

He washed his face
In the frying-pan.

Then around in a circle hand in hand--

He combed his hair
On a wagon-wheel,
And died with the tooth-ache
In his heel!

As they let go of their partners' hands and went right and left, Peter
made his grand dash into the circle, and when the turn of the tune came
he was swinging his mother, his father had Tonald's partner, and Tonald
was in the centre in the title roll of Tucker, executing some of the
most intricate steps that had ever been seen outside of the Isle of
Skye.

Then the tune changed into the skirling bag-pipe lilt all Highlanders
love--and which we who know not the Gaelic profanely call "Weel may the
keel row"--and Tonald got down to his finest work.

He was in the byre now at home beyond the sea, and it is not strange
faces he will be seein', but the lads and lassies of the Glen, and it
is John McNeash who holds the drone under his arm and the chanter in
his hands, and the salty tang of the sea comes up to him and the
peat-smoke is in his nostrils, and the pipes skirl higher and higher as
Tonald McKenzie dances the dance of his forbears in a strange land.
They h