"To flit the old folk would have been impossible," said Duncan, as if speaking to himself. "It was just a deliverance, and the Lord's doing, and wonderful in our eyes. But, sir, there is nothing in this world that is pure good. The soil is cauld: there is little will come out of it: and though we're far out o' the way o' the world in our bit glen, I reckon that what ye ca' progress and a' that, has an effeck whether or no. We want mair than our forbears wanted. No, no just education and advancement: my uncle Willie was brought up a minister, and got a' the education my Robbie is ettling at, though my grandfather had, maybe, less to spare than me. But just there is a difference in the ways o't. And maybe if it had come to the worse, and ye had driven us out, instead of being sae generous----" "It would have been better for you," said Walter, as his companion paused. "I'm not saying that. It was just deliverance. I will tell ye mair, my lord. If I had been driven out, me and my auld mother, and my little bairns, I could have found it in my heart to curse ye, sae young, sae rich, sae well off, and sae inhuman. And the auld wife's death would have lain at your door, and the bairns would never have forgotten it, however well they had prospered, no even when they came to be reasonable men, and could see baith sides of the question like me; they would have carried it with them to yon New World, as they call it; it would have grown to be a tradition and a meesery for ever. Now," said Duncan, with a hoarse half-laugh of emotion, "the sting is out of it whatever happens." "I am glad of that, anyhow," said Walter. "And so am I--and so am I! When ye have a sense of being wranged in your heart, it's like a burnin' wound, like thae puir Irish, the Lord help them! And what was our pickle siller to the like of you? But----" Duncan said, and paused, not knowing how to proceed with due respect and gratitude for what his landlord had done. "But--what you expected has not been realised? the rent, after all, made but a small difference--the relief was not what you hoped?" "I am just incapable, sir, of making ye a right answer," said Duncan, with vehemence. "It's just the effeck of the times, and nae fault o' yours or ours--at least that is all I can make of it. We want mair than our forbears wanted. We are no so easy content. The lads at the college canna live as simple as they once lived. That makes it harder for everybody. The callants! I would not bind them to a life like mine; they would have done better for themselves, though it would have killed granny, and been a sore burden upon Jeannie and me." "The fact is, Duncan, that to have your own way is not much better than to have some one else's way, and that there is nothing worth making a fight about," Walter said, with a bitterness which his humble companion did not understand, and still less approved.