About a couple of hundred yards on the Lochgarra side of Cruagan they met the mail-car; and when, a minute or two thereafter, they came in sight of the scattered crofts, it was obvious from the prevailing commotion that the sheriff’s officer and his assistants had arrived. Indeed, when Mary and Käthchen descended from the waggonette and walked up to James Macdonald’s cottage, the business of getting out the few poor sticks of furniture had already begun—the only onlooker being an old white-haired man, Macdonald’s father, who was standing there dazed and bewildered, as if he did not understand what was going forward. Just as Mary got up, one of the concurrents brought out a spinning-wheel and put it on the ground. "Here—what are you doing?" she said, angrily, to the man who appeared to be the chief officer. "Leave that spinning-wheel alone: that is the very thing I want to see in every cottage!" "I’ve got the sheriff’s warrant, ma’am," said the man, civilly enough. "And we must get everything out and take possession." "Oh, no, you mustn’t!" she said. "This man Macdonald claims compensation—the case must be inquired into——" "I have nothing to do wi’ that, ma’am," said the officer, who seemed a respectable, quiet-spoken, quiet-mannered kind of a person. "I’m bound to carry out the warrant—that’s all I’ve to heed." "But surely I can say whether I want the man turned out or not?" she protested. "He is my tenant. It is to me he owes the money. Surely, if I am satisfied, you can leave the man alone. But where is he? Where is Macdonald?" "As for that, ma’am," said the officer, "he is away down the road, and he says he is going to fetch a gun. Very well. If he presents a gun at either me or my concurrents I will declare myself deforced, and he will have to answer for it before the sheriff." "A gun?" said Mary, rather faintly. "Do you mean to drive the poor man to desperation?" But there was a more immediate danger to be considered. As the two girls had driven up they had heard a good deal of shrill calling from croft to croft and from house to house; and now there had assembled a crowd of women—a crowd hostile and menacing—that came swarming up, uttering all sorts of angry and reproachful cries. Each time that the sheriff’s officer’s assistants appeared at the door of the cottage there was another outburst of hooting and groaning; while here and there a bare-armed virago had furnished herself with an apron-full of rubbish—potato-peelings, cabbage-stalks, stale fish, and the like—and these unsavoury missiles began to hurtle through the air, though for the most part they were badly aimed. The sheriff’s officer affected to pay no heed. He calmly watched the proceedings of his men; the rubbish flew past him unregarded; and the women had not yet taken to stones. But Käthchen beheld this advancing crowd with undisguised alarm.