"But doesn’t that sound reasonable?" said Käthchen, innocently—whereat there was a roar. "Miss Glendinning," said Meredyth, apologetically, "you forget: the haunches of a stag are limited in number. It was Mrs. Jackson Noyes’s idea of a stag we were dealing with. Well, Fred, what next?" "Any landlord or farmer," continued the younger man, with a matter-of-fact air, "found guilty of killing a sheep without the aid of chloroform to be sent to jail for twenty-five years. No lamb to be taken away from its mother without the mother’s consent—in writing, stamped, sealed, and delivered before the Sheriff of Dingwall." "A compulsory rate," suggested Frank Meredyth, "levied on landlords, of course—for the relief of bed-ridden peat-hags——" "Oh, stop that nonsense!" Mary interposed, laughing in a shamefaced kind of way. "They can’t be as ignorant as all that." "Oh, can’t they?" said he, coolly. "I’ve seen lots of worse things—accompanied by eloquent, if occasionally ungrammatical, denunciations of the brutal landlords. You are a landlord, Miss Stanley; and you have taken the wages of blood and sin. If I were you I should feel inclined to throw down the thirty pieces of silver and depart and go and hang myself." "She won’t do that," said her brother. "But what she is more likely to do is to give up the pasture of Meall-na-Fearn that those people demand. And then Mrs. Jackson Noyes will telegraph to the _Connecticut Radiator_ that a great triumph has been achieved, and that the American banner has begun to wave over the benighted Highlands." "I wish the American banner didn’t wave over so many Highland deer-forests," said Meredyth, briefly; and there an end for the moment. But the talk of the two young men when they were by themselves was very different. "What ought to be done, and done at once," said Fred Stanley, "is to send over to Dingwall for a body of police. Indeed, the meeting should be suppressed altogether: it is a clear instigation to riot. I don’t see how a riot can be avoided—if those howlers are allowed to rave. But my sister won’t hear of it. Oh, no! Everything is to be amiable and friendly and pleasant. She is quite sure that the crofters are grateful to her for their lowered rents and all that. Grateful!—they don’t know what gratitude is!" "But at all events you must remember this," said Meredyth, "that your sister has been here a much longer time than you; and she has been doing her best to get to understand these people and their wants and their habits of thinking. She may be a little too confident: in that case, it is for you and me to see that she is kept out of harm’s way. And as far as I can judge, the main event of the day is to be a raid into Glen Orme forest——"