She stopped, as if waiting for an answer. The two men stood still from sheer surprise, and looked at her. Shenac continued:—
“And do you mind what’s said of them that add field to field? and—”
“Shenac, my woman,” said the elder at last, “it’s no becoming in you to speak in that kind of a way to one older than your father was. I doubt you’re forgetting—”
But Shenac put his words aside with a gesture of indifference.
“And to speak false words of our Allister to his mother in her trouble as though he had led your wild lad Evan astray. You little know what our Allister saved him from more than once. But that is not for to-day. I have this to, say to you, Angus Dhu: you must be content with the half you have gotten; for not another acre of my father’s land shall ever be yours, though all the elders in Glengarry stood at your back.—I will not whisht, Hamish. He is to know that he is not to meddle between my mother and me. It’s not or the like of Angus Dhu to say that my mother’s children shall be taken from her in her trouble. Our affairs may be bad enough, but they’ll be none the better for your meddling in them.”
“Shenac,” entreated Hamish, “you’ll be sorry for speaking that way to our father’s cousin.”
“Our father’s oppressor rather,” she insisted scornfully. But she had said her say; and, besides, the lads and little Flora had heard their voices, and were drawing near.
“Children,” said Shenac, “you are to come home. And mind, you are not to set foot on this bank again without our mother’s leave. It’s Angus Dhu’s land now, he says, and not ours.”
The creek—that part of it near which the willows grew, and where the old ashery used to stand—had been their daily resort every summer-day all their lives; and they all looked at her with astonishment and dismay, but none of them spoke.
“Come home to our mother, boys.—Flora, come home.” And Shenac lifted her little sister over the foundation of great stones, and beckoned to the boys to follow her.