The moment they were near enough, signs, unintelligible to the keepers, began to pass between the father and son: Rob's meant that he must let him pass unnoticed; Hector's that he understood. So, with but the usual salutation of a stranger, Rob passed them. The same moment he turned, and with one swift sweep of his knife, severed the bonds of his father. The old man stepped back, and father and son stood fronting the enemy.
"Now," said Rob, "if you are honest men, stand to it! How dared you bind Hector of the Stags?"
"Because he is not an honest man," replied one of them.
Rob answered him with a blow. The man made at him, but Hector stepped between.
"Say that again of my father," cried Rob, "who has no speech to defend himself, and I will drive my knife into you."
"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!"