Dugald took Kenneth aside.
“There is bad news come,” he said; “all is lost. The glen is to be evicted.”
Kenneth’s heart sank within him.
The cloud then that had been gathering so long was about to burst.
It was well-nigh a year since the tenantry had been asked to leave. They heeded not the summons. They could not believe that their own auld laird McGregor would send his people away. Little they knew. McGregor would never appear among them again. The edict sent through him was sent by or at the instigation of the new American laird. The glens were no good to him with people in them—so he said—he must have deer; he was buying the land for the “sport” it would afford him, his family and friends. Yet he doubted his own power, being a foreigner, to evict.
But that very day the last summons was given previous to forcible expulsion.
And the young men of the clachan and glens were wild. They would stand by their homesteads, they would grasp dirk and claymore, they would fight, they would die where they stood.
But at the great meeting that took place the wisdom of the grey-haired prevailed. And with sorrow, ay, and tears, they all came at last to the conclusion that resistance would be worse than useless.
They would not go till they were forced, they would stay and see the last of the dear old spot, but they would bend their necks to the yoke, they would maintain a passive attitude.