"Dogs! dogs! O God of grace--dogs and cowards!" cried Rory. "I could be dirking a Diarmaid or two if by luck they were near me."
"It is piping that is to be here," said Paruig, "and it is not piping for an hour nor piping for an evening, but the piping of Dunvegan that stops for sleep nor supper."
So the three stayed in the bothy and played tune about while time went by the door. The birds flew home to the branches, the longnecked beasts flapped off to the shore to spear their flat fish; the rutting deers bellowed with loud throats in the deeps of the wood that stands round Half Town, and the scents of the moist night came gusty round the door. Over the back of Auchnabreac the sun trailed his plaid of red and yellow, and the loch stretched salt and dark from Cairn Dubh to Creaggans.
In from the hill the men and the women came, weary-legged, and the bairns nodded at their heels. Sleepiness was on the land, but the pipers, piping in the bothy, kept the world awake.
"We will go to bed in good time," said the folks, eating their suppers at their doors; "in good time when this tune is ended." But tune came on tane, and every tune better than its neighbour, and they waited.
A cruisie-light was set alowe in the blind man's bothy, and the three men played old tunes and new tunes--salute and lament and brisk dances and marches that coax tired brogues on the long roads.
"Here's 'Tulloch Ard' for you, and tell me who made it," said Rory.
"Who kens that? Here's 'Raasay's Lament,' the best port Padruig Mor ever put together."
"Tunes and tunes. I'm for 'A Kiss o' the King's Hand.'"
"Thug mi pòg 'us pòg 'us pòg, Thug mi pòg do làmh an righ, Cha do chuir gaoth an craicionn caorach, Fear a fhuair an fhaoilt ach mi!"
Then a quietness came on Half Town, for the piping stopped, and the people at their doors heard but their blood thumping and the night-hags in the dark of the firwood.
"A little longer and maybe there will be more," they said to each other, and they waited; but no more music came from the drones, so they went in to bed.
There was quiet over Half Town, for the three pipers talked about the Lost Tune.
"A man my father knew," said Gilian, "heard a bit of it once in Moideart. A terrible fine tune he said it was, but sore on the mind."