"We are only doing our duty!" said the other. "We came upon him there cutting up the deer he had just killed on the new laird's land."
"Who are you to say which is the stranger's, and which the Macruadh's? Neither my father nor I have ever seen the faces of you in the country! Will you pretend to know the marches better than my father, who was born and bred in the heather, and knows every stone on the face of the hills?"
"We can't help where he was born or what he knows! he was on our land!"
"He is the Macruadh's keeper, and was on his own land. You will get yourselves into trouble!"
"We'll take our chance!"
"Take your man then!"
"If he try to escape, I swear by the bones of my grandfather," said the more inimical of the two, inheritor of a clan-feud with the Macruadhs, "I will shoot him."
Rob of the Angels burst into a scornful laugh.
"You will! will you?"
"I will not kill him; I don't want to be hanged for him! but I will empty my shot-barrel into the legs of him! So take your chance; you are warned!"