“No, Elspeth,” he said. “There will be no going away from here, for you and me, till we go feet foremost.”
Before the afternoon we had heard all: how he had gone to see this English lord who had “usurped” Drumdoon: how he had not gained an interview, and had seen no other than Mr Laing, the East Lothian factor. He had had to accept bitter hard terms. Sir Ewan Campbell was in Madras, with his regiment, a ruined man: he would never be home again, and, if he were, would be a stranger in the Three Straths, where he and his had lived, and where his kindred had been born and had died during six centuries back. There was no hope. This Lord Greycourt wanted more rent, and he also wanted Strathgorm for a deer-run.
We were sitting, brooding on these things: in our ears the fierce words that Gorromalt had said, with bitter curses, upon the selling of the ancient land and the betrayal of the people.
Morag was in one of her strange moods. I saw her, with her shining eyes, looking at the birch that overhung the small foaming linn beyond us, just as though she saw the soul of it, and the soul with strange speech to it.
“Where is Muireall?” she said to me suddenly, in a low voice.
“Muireall?” I repeated, “Muireall? I am not for knowing, Morag. Why do you ask? Do you want her?”
She did not answer, but went on:
“Have you seen him again?”
“Him?… Whom?”
“Jasper Morgan, this English lord’s son.”