All who came forward had the same, or nearly the same, excuses to make.
Gillespie Ruadh—or Red Archibald—Minnie's uncle, was also in default; but Snaggs, who had cast favourable eyes on his pretty niece, spoke to him with such excessive suavity that old Archy was quite puzzled.
Many professed their readiness and ability to pay the old rent, but their total incapacity to meet the new and exorbitant one, which they knew too well was but the plea, the pretence, on which they were to be driven from the glen, that it might be well stocked with deer and black cock. The last summoned by the factor was Callum Dhu Mac Ian.
My fosterer, who was viewed as a kind of champion by the people, pressed the hand of Minnie to reassure her, and with one stride appeared before Snaggs in his tattered Highland dress. He carried a gun in his hand, and had a couple of red foxes, hanging dead over his left shoulder. A dark cloud was hovering on Callum's brow and a lurid spark was gleaming in his eye, both indicative of the fire he was smothering in his heart—a fire fanned by the lamentations of the people, who were now collected in little family groups and communing together.
'How are you, Callum?' asked Snaggs, with a sardonic grin, holding out his left hand, as his right held a pen: but Callum drew back, saying proudly,
'Thank you—but I would not take the left hand of a king.'
'Well then, neer-do-weel,' said Snaggs, surveying the tall and handsome hunter with an eye of ill-disguised antipathy, 'what have you to say?'
'I am no neer-do-weel, Mr. Snaggs,' replied Callum loftily, and disdaining to touch his bonnet or bend his head.
'Pay up then,' was the pithy rejoinder.
'I never was asked for rent before. I and mine have dwelt rent-free under the Mac Innons of Glen Ora since these hills had a name. We were hunters, father and son in succession, as you know well, and paid neither rent nor kain; we owed nothing to the chief but an armed man's service in time of war and feud; so I see no reason why it should be otherwise now.'