men put out their
oars and pushed her off. And now, in the dark night, the skill of the
pipes rose again; and it was no stately and mournful lament that young
Donald played up there at the bow as the four oars struck the sea and
sent a flash of white fire down into the deeps.

"Donald," Hamish had said to him on the shore, "when you are going out
to the steamer, it is the 'Seventy-ninth's Farewell to Chubraltar'
that you will play, and you will play no other thing than that."

And surely the Seventy-ninth were not sorry to leave Gibraltar when
their piper composed for them so glad a farewell.

At the high windows of Castle Dare the mother stood, and her niece, and
as they watched the yellow lamp move slowly out from the black shore,
they heard this proud and joyous march that Donald was playing to herald
the approach of his master. They listened to it as it grew fainter and
fainter, and as the small yellow star trembling over the dark waters,
became more and more remote. And then this other sound--this blowing of
a steam whistle far away in the darkness?

"He will be in good time, aunt; she is a long way off yet," said Janet
Macleod. But the mother did not speak.

Out there on the dark and moving waters the great steamer was slowly
drawing near the open boat; and as she came up, the vast hull of her,
seen against the starlit sky, seemed a mountain.

"Now, Donald," Macleod called out, "you will take the dog--here is the
string; and you will see he does not spring into the water."

"Yes, I will take the dog," muttered the boy, half to himself. "Oh yes,
I will take the dog; but it is better if I was going with you, Sir
Keith, than any dog."

A rope was thrown out, the boat dragged up to the side of the steamer,
the small gangway let down, and presently Macleod was on the deck of the
large vessel. Then Oscar was hauled up too, and the rope flung loose,
and the boat drifted away into the darkness. But the last good-bye had
not been said, for over the black waters came the sound of pipes once
more, the melancholy wail of "Macintosh's Lament."

"Confound that obstinate brat!" Macleod said to himself. "Now he will go
back to Castle Dare and make the women miserable."

"The captain is below at his supper, Sir Keith," said the mate. "Will
you go down to him?"

"Yes, I will go down to him," said he; and he made his way along the
deck of the steamer.

He was arrested by the sound of some one crying, and he looked down