'Alisdair Mac Gouran.'
A fine-looking old Highlander, upwards of seventy years of age stepped forward. His tall and erect figure was clad in coarse blue cloth, and his long locks, which were white as snow, glittered in the sun, when he politely removed his bonnet before the grand vizier of the new proprietor, with the usual greeting, as he knew no language but Gaelic,
'Failte na maiduin duibh'—(Hail—good morning to you).
'You have your rent at least, I hope, Alisdair?' said Snaggs, with a grin on his thin lips.
'I have the old rent,' replied the cotter with a sickly smile.
'But the new?'
'A chial! what would you be asking of me? I have the old rent, and by the sweat of my brow and the toil of my children's tender hands have I earned it. It is here. Have mercy on us, Ephraim Snaggs, and do not double the rent. You stand between us and Sir Horace—between us and starvation. He will be advised by you for good or for evil—he is an Englishman, and like a Lowlander, can know no better. You are aware that my croft is small, and that my eight children have to support themselves by fishing; but the famine was sore three years ago; our potatoes failed, and as you know well our little crop of wheat was literally thrashed on the mountain by the wind. All that remained was devoured by the game of the Duchess. I then fell into arrears. I, like my fathers before me, for more generations than I can number, have regularly paid rent and kain to the uttermost farthing—for God and Mary's sake, take pity on us now, Mr. Snaggs. Accept the old rental, but spare us the new—for a little time at least, or eleven human beings, including my old and bedridden mother, now past her ninetieth year, will be homeless and houseless!'
'Mac Gouran,' said Mr. Snaggs, with mock impressiveness, while his malevolent eye belied his bland voice; 'the divine Walton says, "can you or any man charge God that he hath not given enough to make life happy?"'
'God gave, but the duke, the lord, and the earl, have taken away,' answered the Highlander, sharply.
Snaggs grinned again—took the money, gave a receipt, and with it a printed tract. Then he made another entry in his fatal book, and a groan escaped the breast of Mac Gouran, for too well did he know what that entry meant. His cot was in a picturesque place where Sir Horace wished to plant some coppice; so the humble roof, where twenty generations of brave and hardy peasants had reared their sturdy broods, was doomed to be swept away.