'What have you dared to say, Mr. Snaggs?' I asked, turning sharply to that personage; 'why do I find my mother in tears?'
'Because she is out of cash,' was the cool reply; 'a simple reason, my dear sir, and a plain one; but it is very little that you do to furnish her with any. I have called for the last time anent the arrears of rent due to Sir Horace Everingham—the new proprietor of this estate—arrears due before he acquired the lands, and I receive still the same unvaried excuses, about sheep with the rot, cattle with the murrain, or scraps of traditions and antediluvian nonsense, about the time when Loch Ora belonged to the Mac Innons—and about your great-grandfather who fought at Culloden, and was nearly hanged at Carlisle, as, I think, he deserved to be, for opposing the House of Hanover, and the Kirk as established by law. Now the law, of which I am an unworthy representative—the law says, young man, that when a tenant—but I need not quote the cases before the Lords of Council and Session in 1792 or 1756 on this point, to you. If an instalment at least, of the aforesaid arrears—say about fifty pounds—is not paid to me—to me, sir,' he continued, laying a fat finger impressively into the palm of his left hand, 'then a notice of eviction shall be duly served upon you, with the rest of the lazy wretches in Glen Ora, who must all sail for Canada this summer, sure as my name is Ephraim Snaggs. Moreover, sir, I may inform you, that Sir Horace, by my recommendation—mine, sir—has some intentions of pulling down this absurd-looking old house, and erecting here a box for his friend, Captain Clavering, or for Mr. Snobleigh, of Snobleigh Park, I know not which; and if so, the law must be put in force against you, sir—the law of expulsion—you hear me!'
The reader may imagine the pride, wrath, and bitterness that swelled up within me, at this insolent speech, which had gradually approached the bullying point. I made a stride towards Snaggs, and my fingers twitched with an irresistible desire to grasp his throat.
My mother (poor old woman!) had long been in ill health. Mhari Mac Innon the 'wise woman' of our locality, and other aged people of the glen, alleged her illness was caused by her declining to drink of St. Colme's well, a famous medicinal spring in Glen Ora, where, for ages, the Mac Innons and adjacent tribes had been wont to quaff the water at midnight, as a sovereign remedy for all diseases; and thereafter drop in a coin, or tie a rag to the alders which overshadowed it, as an offering to the guardian spirit of the fountain. Pale, sad, and sickly, my mother sat in her high-backed chair, motionless and silent as if overwhelmed by the approaching tide of ruin, in the form of debt which we had not a shilling to meet—and of avarice which we could not satisfy.
'Mr. Snaggs,' said I, 'you should have reserved your detestable communications for my ears alone, and thus spared my poor mother the humiliation of a moment so bitter as this. She is old, and her thoughts and ideas have come down to her from other times. She cannot see, nor believe, that any man has authority to turn her off the land of the Mac Innons—'
'Pooh, my dear sir,' said Snaggs, waving his hand, and rising; 'if you are about to begin your old-world nonsense and twaddle about Celtic right in the soil, I must leave you. The sheriff's warrants will tell another story next week, if fifty pounds at least—'
'Listen to me, Ephraim Snaggs,' said I, forcing him into a seat, and grasping his shoulder like a vice. 'I am here on the land that belonged to my forefathers—to Angus Mac Innon, who fought for King James at Culloden—'
'Ha-ha—stuff—there you go again!'
'There was a time,' I continued, fiercely, 'when had you, or such as you, spoken above your breath in Glen Ora, you had been flung into the loch with a hundred weight of stone at your neck. There was a time when the Mac Innons owned all the land we may see from Ben Ora; when we had Griban in Mull, the Isles of Tiree, of Pabay, and Scalpa, with Strathardle in Skye. Poor as we are now, we owned all that, but only in common—mark me, sir, in common, with the people of our name. Listen to me, Mr. Snaggs,' I continued, as the fierce sob of pride, so difficult to repress, rose to my throat; 'I am the last of a long line, whose misfortune it has been to fight for the losing side. Our people marched to Worcester under Lachlan M'hor, and perished there in heaps; we were at Sheriffmuir, under the banner of the Marquis of Seaforth, for a marquis he was, by order of the king; we were "out" in the '45, under Angus Mac Innon, and of all the swordsmen he marched from yonder glen, which you are about to depopulate, not a man came back from Culloden—as God hears me—not one. Since then our people have gone forth in the Highland regiments to every part of the world. Some have left their bones on the heights of Abraham and in the isles of the Western Indies; some sleep under the shadow of the Pyramids and on the plains of the Peninsula. In India, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, wherever Britain wanted men to fight her battles, there have they been faithful and true, loyal and brave, standing foremost in the ranks of war, and giving place to none! All my own family have perished in the service of their country since this century began—I am the last of them, and as their reward, our roof is to be torn from us, and we are to be expelled from the home and the graves of our kindred—we, the descendants of the old aboriginal race, who first trod the land after God separated it from the waters, and why? because a miserable fifty pounds may not be forthcoming by a certain day! There was a time, Mr. Ephraim Snaggs, when the cry of Bas Alpin from yonder rock would easily have brought six hundred swordsmen to guard the roof you threaten; and he whom you beard—he, who from the first Mac Innon, has come through twenty generations in the right line.'
'Had you come through twenty generations in the wrong line I would have respected you quite as much, sir,' said Mr. Snaggs, with his bland professional sneer, as he rose again, and smoothed the nap of his hat, preparatory to retiring, as if wearied by the torrent of Gaelic I had poured upon him. 'All these fine arguments about broadswords and barbarism won't pay the rent or satisfy the just claims of Sir Horace, thus the law of landlord and tenant must take its course. You have no means of raising money, I suppose?'