This time the tune was "Macgregors' Gathering," and the sound of it stirred the grimy lips of a man outside who was delivering coals--himself a Macgregor--to follow suit.

Mr McCunn was a very fountain of music that morning.
Tibby, the aged maid, had his newspaper and letters waiting by his plate, and a dish of ham and eggs frizzling near the fire.

He fell to ravenously but still musingly, and he had reached the stage of scones and jam before he glanced at his correspondence.

There was a letter from his wife now holidaying at the Neuk Hydropathic.

She reported that her health was improving, and that she had met various people who had known somebody else whom she had once known herself.