"ANGUS MACKAY."
[#] Forbye—besides.
"Poor man!" said Mary. And then she looked up as she handed back the letter. "I should have thought," she continued, addressing Donald Ross, "that a report like that would have caused you to hesitate before recommending any more emigration. Was it you who sent that poor man out?"
"Oh, no," he answered at once; "that Angus Mackay lived at Loch Torridon—a long way south from here. I only got to know something of him accidentally. But mind you, Miss Stanley, I would not assume that even in his case emigration has been a failure. That letter is simply saturated with home-sickness. I should not be at all surprised to hear in a year or two that Angus was doing very well with his farm; and it is almost a certainty that when his family have grown up they will find themselves in excellent circumstances. Of course it is hard on him that his wife should be ill, especially with those young children—but these are misfortunes that happen everywhere."
"Emigration?" she repeated (and Käthchen could tell by her tone that this scheme of his found no favour in her sight). "So that is your cure for the poverty and discontent in the Highlands? But don't you think it is rather a confession of failure? Don't you think if the landlords were doing their duty there would be no need to drive these poor people away from their homes? No doubt, as you say, families grow up and marry, while the land does not increase; but look at the thousands upon thousands of acres that at present don't support a single human being——"
"You mean the deer-forests?" he said quite coolly (for the owner of the little island of Heimra had not much personal and immediate interest in the rights and duties of proprietors). "Yes; they say that is the alternative. They say either emigration or throwing open the deer-forests to small tenants and crofters—banishing the deer altogether, limiting the sheep-farms, planting homesteads. It sounds very well in the House of Commons, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work in practice. Such deer-forests as I happen to know are quite useless for any such purpose; the great bulk of the soil is impossible—rocks and peat simply; and then the small patches of land that might be cultivated—less than two acres in every thousand, they say—are scattered, and remote, and inaccessible. Who is to make roads, to begin with—even if the crofters were mad enough to imagine that they could send their handful of produce away to the distant markets with any chance of competition?"
But she was not convinced: a curious obstinacy seemed to have got hold of her.
"I can't help thinking," she repeated, "that emigration is a kind of cowardly remedy. Isn't it rather like admitting that you have failed? Surely there must be some other means? Why, before I came to Lochgarra I made up my mind that I would try to find out about the crofters who had gone away or been sent away, and I would invite them to come back and take up their old holdings."
"It would be a cruel kindness," said he. "And I doubt whether they would thank you for the offer. Yes, I dare say some would; and on their way back to their old home they would be filled with joy. When they came in sight of Ru-Minard I dare say they would be crying with delight; and when they landed at Lochgarra they would be for falling on their knees to kiss the beloved shore. But that wouldn't last long. When they came to look at the sour and marshy soil, the peat-hags, and the rocks, they would begin to alter their mind——"
"In any case," said she, "I have abandoned the idea for the present; I find I have already plenty on my hands. And I don't confess that I have failed yet. I am doing what I can. It is a very slow process; for they seem to imagine that whatever I suggest is for my own interest; at the same time, I don't see that I have failed yet. And as for emigration——"