'Aw—of course,' hummed Snobleigh.
And there was an end of it; though I would have died rather than accepted the smallest favour at his hands. To be patronized by him! The idea was enough to call my mother's fiery spirit back to earth.
As a huntsman, Callum was now, by mere force of habit, proceeding to gralloch the stag with his sharpened skene; and as this work progressed, unfortunately for the legends of our glensmen, he found it to be—not two hundred years old—but a fine warrantable stag of at least six summers.
'Well, my friend, the fox-hunter,' said Clavering; 'could you not stay among us—I'll take the odds on it, Sir Horace could do something for you.'
'Likely enough,' said the baronet, mounting; 'you would make a first-rate gamekeeper.'
'Many thanks, sir,' replied Callum, touching his bonnet with a fierce and covert irony gleaming in his dark eyes; 'but the time has gone past, Englishman, for that too; we go, we go to return no more! You purchased this land, true; any other depopulating game speculator might have done so; but he who sold it to you—was it his to sell? It belonged to the people and not to him. The land was God's gift to the Gael; it is theirs, and all the produce thereof is theirs.'
'This is a thief's maxim,' said Sir Horace, sharply.
'To you it may seem so; but we have a saying among us—Breac na linne, slàt na coille, s'fiadh na fireach meirladh nach do gabh duine riamh nair as.
'What the devil is all that in English? it sounds like the croaking of frogs in a Dutch canal.'
'It means, that a fish from the stream, a stag from the mountain, or a tree from the forest are no thefts, but the right of he who wants them.'