"That's the Lost _Piobaireachd_," said Paruig Dali when the bag sunk on his arm.
Sometimes in the spring of the year the winds from Lorn have it their own way with the Highlands. They will come tearing furious over the hundred hills, spurred the faster by the prongs of Cruachan and Dunchuach, and the large woods of home toss before them like corn before the hook. Up come the poor roots and over on their broken arms go the tall trees, and in the morning the deer will trot through new lanes cut in the forest.
A wind of that sort came on the full of the day when the two pipers were leaving Half Town.
"Stay till the storm is over," said the kind folks; and "Your bed and board are here for the pipers forty days," said Paruig Dali. But "No" said the two; "we have business that your _piobaireachd_ put us in mind of."
"I'm hoping that I did not play yon with too much skill," said the old man.
"Skill or no skill," said Gilian, "the like of yon I never heard. You played a port that makes poor enough all ports ever one listened to, and piping's no more for us wanderers."
"Blessings with thee!" said the folks all, and the two men went down into the black wood among the cracking trees.
Six lads looked after them, and one said, "It is an ill day for a body to take the world for his pillow, but what say you to following the pipers?"
"It might," said one, "be the beginning of fortune. I am weary enough of this poor place, with nothing about it but wood and water and tufty grass. If we went now, there might be gold and girls at the other end."
They took crooks and bonnets and went after the two pipers. And when they were gone half a day, six women said to their men, "Where can the lads be?"
"We do not know that," said the men, with hot faces, "but we might be looking." They kissed their children and went, with _cromags_ in their hands, and the road they took was the road the King of Errin rides, and that is the road to the end of days.
A weary season fell on Half Town, and the very bairns dwined at the breast for a change of fortune. The women lost their strength, and said, "To-day my back is weak, tomorrow I will put things to right," and they looked slack-mouthed and heedless-eyed at the sun wheeling round the trees. Every week a man or two would go to seek something--a lost heifer or a wounded roe that was never brought back--and a new trade came to the place, the selling of herds. Far away in the low country, where the winds are warm and the poorest have money, black-cattle were wanted, so the men of Half Town made up long droves and took them round Glen Beag and the Rest.