"
"You will not be going to leave us now?" said Maclise eagerly.
"Yes, I shall go, Maclise, but," with a proud lift of his head, "tell
them I am coming back again."
And with that message Maclise went to the Glen. From cot to cot and from
lip to lip the message sped, that Mr. Allan was himself again, and that,
though on the morrow's morn he was leaving the Glen, he himself had
promised that he would return.
That evening, as the gloaming deepened, the people of the Glen gathered,
as was their wont, at their cottage doors to listen to old piper
Macpherson as he marched up and down the highroad. This night, it was
observed, he no longer played that most heart-breaking of all
Scottish laments, "Lochaber No More." He had passed up to the no less
heart-thrilling, but less heartbreaking, "Macrimmon's Lament." In a
pause in Macpherson's wailing notes there floated down over the Glen the
sound of the pipes up at the big House.
"Bless my soul! whisht, man!" cried Betsy Macpherson to her spouse.
"Listen yonder!" For the first time in months they heard the sound of
Allan's pipes.
"It is himself," whispered the women to each other, and waited. Down the
long avenue of ragged firs, and down the highroad, came young Mr. Allan,
in all the gallant splendour of his piper's garb, and the tune he played
was no lament, but the blood-stirring "Gathering of the Gordons.
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