"Yes, yes; I know you all love my father's son and my uncle's nephew; but how can it go well with the Macruadh when it goes ill with his clan? There is no way now for a chief to be the father of his people; we are all poor together! My uncle--God rest his soul!--they managed it so, I suppose, as to persuade him there was no help for it! Well, a man must be an honest man, even if there be no way but ruin! God knows, as we've all heard my father say a hundred times from the pulpit, there's no ruin but dishonesty! For poverty and hard work, he's a poor creature would crouch for those!" "He who well goes down hill, holds his head up!" said Annie, and a pause followed. "There are strangers at the New House, we hear," she said. "From a distance I saw some young ladies, and one or two men. I don't desire to see more of them. God forbid I should wish them any manner of harm! but--I hardly understand myself--I don't like to see them there. I am afraid it is pride. They are rich, I hear, so we shall not be troubled with attention from them; they will look down upon us." "Look down on the Macruadh!" exclaimed Annie, as if she could not believe her ears. "Not that I should heed that!" he went on. "A cock on the barn-ridge looks down on you, and you don't feel offended! What I do dread is looking down on them. There is something in me that can hate, Annie, and I fear it. There is something about the land--I don't care about money, but I feel like a miser about the land!--I don't mean ANY land; I shouldn't care to buy land unless it had once been ours; but what came down to me from my own people--with my own people upon it--I would rather turn the spigot of the molten gold and let it run down the abyss, than a rood of that slip from me! I feel it even a disgrace to have lost what of it I never had!" "Indeed, Macruadh," said Annie, "it's a hard time! There is no money in the country! And fast the people are going after Lachlan!" "I shall miss you, Annie!" "You are very kind to us all, sir." "Are you not all my own! And you have to take care of for Lachlan's sake besides. He left you solemnly to my charge--as if that had been necessary, the foolish fellow, when we are foster-brothers!" Again came a pause. "Not a gentleman-farmer left from one end of the strath to the other!" said the chief at length. "When Ian is at home, we feel just like two old turkey-cocks left alone in the yard!" "Say two golden eagles, sir, on the cliff of the rock." "Don't compare us to the eagle, Annie. I do not love the bird. He is very proud and greedy and cruel, and never will know the hand that tames him. He is the bird of the monarch or the earl, not the bird of the father of his people. But he is beautiful, and I do not kill him." "They shot another, the female bird, last week! All the birds are going! Soon there will be nothing but the great sheep and the little grouse. The capercailzie's gone, and the ptarmigan's gone!--Well, there's a world beyond!"