"Then you will leave the hills sure enough!" said the chief.
"Not so sure, Macruadh! We shall rest in our graves till the resurrection!" said an old man.
"Only our bodies," returned Alister.
"Well, and what will my body be but myself! Much I would make of myself without my body! I will stay with my body, and let my soul step about, waiting for me, and craving a shot at the stags with the big branches! No, I won't be going from my own strath!"
"You would not like to be left in it alone, with none but unfriendly Sasunnachs about you—not one of your own people to close your eyes?"
"Indeed it would not be pleasant. But the winds would be the same; and the hills would be the same; and the smell of the earth would be the same; and they would be our own worms that came crawling over me to eat me! No; I won't leave the strath till I die—and I won't leave it then!"
"That is very well, John!" said the woman; "but if you were all day with your little ones—all of them all day looking hunger in your face, you would think it a blessed country wherever it was that gave you bread to put in their mouths!"
"And how to keep calling this home!" said another. "Why, it will soon be everywhere a crime to set foot on a hill, for frightening of the deer! I was walking last month in a part of the county I did not know, when I came to a wall that went out of my sight, seeming to go all round a big hill. I said to myself, 'Is no poor man to climb to heaven any more?' And with that I came to a bill stuck on a post, which answered me; for it said thus: 'Any well-dressed person, who will give his word not to leave the path, may have permission to go to the top of the hill, by applying to—'—I forget the name of the doorkeeper, but sure he was not of God, seeing his door was not to let a poor man in, but to keep him out!"
"They do well to starve us before they choke us: we might else fight when it comes to the air to breathe!"
"Have patience, my sons," said the chief. "God will not forget us."