CHAPTER VII.
THE RENT COURT.
I shall never forget the emotion of shame that glowed within me on finding myself compelled to avoid this miserable worm.
'He is coming! he is coming!' exclaimed Minnie, wringing her hands, as we perceived from the dining-room window two mounted figures appear in the gorge of the glen.
'Oclion! ochon! ochon!' chorused old Mhari, lifting up her hands, 'the sorrows that have fallen upon us would sink the blessed ship of Clanronald.'
Callum uttered a hearty oath in Gaelic, and pulled his bonnet over his knitted brow.
Mr. Snaggs dismounted at the door and gave his green bag to Minnie, on whom he smiled familiarly, and then perceiving that she was pretty, he pinched her rosy cheek, and eyed her with a glance that had more of a leer than benignity in it; but he was always singularly suave to Minnie. Being too indisposed to receive him, my mother remained in her own room, and I—knowing that we had not the cash to meet his demands, took my rod and went to the Loch nan Spiordan for our supper; as there the tarr-dhiargan, or red-bellied char, were in great plenty, and the banks were a favourite ride of Laura Everingham. For Snaggs I left a note, filled with the old excuses, of wet weather, bad crops, corn destroyed by the south-west wind, sheep with the rot, cattle with the murrain, hard times, and so forth. He read it over—smiled faintly, and after carefully folding and docketing it, he seated himself at a table which was placed in front of the house under an ancient lime, on the branches of which many a cateran from the isles had swung in the wind. There his clerk arranged his papers, and while the poor dejected defaulters came slowly down the glen communing sorrowfully together, Mr. Snaggs regaled himself on bread, cheese, and a dram which Callum Dhu placed before him, with more of old Highland hospitality than the factor merited.
The excitement was general; thirty-two families the remnant of our once powerful tribe, all linked and connected together by ties of blood, descent, and misfortune, hovered on the brink of ruin.
One by one, the tenants approached bonnet in hand, and before this man of power and parchment bent their heads that under braver auspices would not have stooped to the whistle of a cannon-ball. Poor people! their tremulous but earnest excuses for the lack of money, though their small rents varied only from fifteen to twenty pounds or so, and the half-uttered prayers for mercy, from those who could no more pay this, than liquidate the National Debt, were all the same.
One named Ian Mac Raonuil had been ten years a soldier, and though thrice wounded, was unpensioned, as there was a break in his service, having enlisted twice. Latterly he had earned a scanty subsistence by fishing in the salt lochs beyond Ben Ora; he was now sixty years of age, and had seven children. He could pay the old rent, but was totally unable to pay the new, which was exactly triple what had ever been paid for his poor cottage within the memory of man. The factor shook his legal head—-made an entry in his black-book—handed to the haggard-eyed Mac Raonuil (as he did to all) a pious tract, and summoned the next on his fatal roll.