"'You will like hell,' says Alan Donn. 'You'll stay here wi' your childer and the mother o' your childer.'
"Then a wee old man, that was a piper, speaks up. He was bent in two over an ash plant was in his right hand, and his left hand held his back.
"'It's a foolish thing you are doing, Alan Donn,' says he. 'How can you bring off the poor people?'
"'I don't want to bring off the poor people, Shamus-a-Feeba, James of the Pipes. But there's not a rock, a wind, a current, a wave itself of Struth na-Maoile that I don't know. I'm figuring on rigging up some kind of sea-anchor,' says Alan Donn, says he, 'and getting the ignorant foreigners to chop their gear overboard, and riding the storm out. Don't worry yourself, Shamus-a-Feeba.'
"That was the way of your uncle, Alan Donn Campbell. He was very rough with the strong, but he was ay considerate of the old and over-young. He'd be rough with the king of England but he'd be awfu' polite to an ould man."
"God, is Alan Donn dead?" Shane was near tears. "Do people like Alan Donn die?"
"Aye, they die, too," said Simon Fraser. "And rogues live. It's queer.
"The boat was a'ready to be put into the sea, when your uncle sees mysel' on the edge o' the gathering. He comes straight to me. You mind how Alan Donn used to go through a crowd.
"'Are you the sailing man,' says he, 'wha's a half-brither to Red Tam McNeil of the Ten-Acre?'"
"'I am, sir, Alan Donn.'