The small, suspicious eyes glanced at her furtively.
"I not saying it too mich," he made answer, slowly.
"Oh, but I will consult Mr. Purdie about it," said she, in her pleasantest way. "My own impression is that thirty shillings an acre is only asked for good land. But I will inquire; and see what can be done. Well, good morning!—I mustn't take up your time."
She was coming away when he looked after her.
"I not saying—it—too mich rent," said he; and then he turned to his plough; and his laborious task was resumed.
"Isn't that odd?" said Mary, as they were going along the highway again. "None of them seem anxious to have their rents reduced. All day yesterday—not a single complaint!"
"Well, Mamie," said Käthchen, "I don't know; but I can guess at a reason—perhaps they are afraid to complain."
This set Mary thinking; and they went on in silence. She wished she knew Gaelic.
When they came within sight of the ancient boundary line, they left the road, struck across a swampy piece of land where there were a few straggling sheep, and then set to work to climb the bare and rocky hill-side. It was an arduous climb; but both the young women were active and lithe and agile; and they made very fair progress—stopping now and again to recover their breath. Indeed, it was not the difficulty of the ascent that was present to their mind; it was the terribly bleak and lonely character of this domain they were entering. Higher and higher as they got, they seemed to be leaving the living world behind them; and then, when they reached a level plateau, and could look away across this new world, there was nothing but an endless monotony of brown and purple knolls and slopes, covered with heather and withered grass, and then a series of hills along the horizon, with one or two lofty mountain-peaks, dark and precipitous, and streaked here and there with snow. There was no sign of life; nor any sound. As they advanced further and further into this wilderness, a strange sense of intrusion came over them; it was as if they had come into a land peopled by the dead—who yet might be regarding them; they looked and listened, as if expecting something, they knew not what. They did not speak the one to the other; indeed, they were some little way apart—those two small figures in this vast moorland solitude. Then they came to a tarn—the water black as night—not a bush nor the stump of a tree along its melancholy shores. Nor even here was there the call of a curlew, or the sudden whirr of a wild-duck's wings. At this point the girls had come together again.
"Who can wonder at the superstitions of the Highlanders?" said Käthchen, half absently.