“Tallisker, you’ll be sorry enough for your temper erelong.  You hae gien way mair than I did.  Ye ken how you feel about it.”

“I feel ashamed o’ mysel’, laird.  You’ll no lay the blame o’ it to my office, but to Dugald Tallisker his ain sel’.  There’s a deal o’ Dugald Tallisker in me yet, laird; and whiles he is o’er much for Dominie Tallisker.”

They were at the gate by this time, and Crawford held out his hand and said,

“Come in, dominie.”

“No; I’ll go hame, laird, and gie mysel’ a talking to.  Tell Mr. Selwyn I want to see him.”

CHAPTER III.

Alas, how often do Christ’s words, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword,” prove true.  George Selwyn went away, but the seed he had dropped in this far-off corner of Scotland did not bring forth altogether the peaceable fruits of righteousness.  In fact, as we have seen, it had scarcely begun to germinate before the laird and the dominie felt it to be a root of bitterness between them.  For if Crawford knew anything he knew that Tallisker would never relinquish his new work, and perhaps if he yielded to any reasonable object Tallisker would stand by him in his project.

He did not force the emigration plan upon his notice.  The summer was far advanced; it would be unjustifiable to send the clan to Canada at the beginning of winter.  And, as it happened, the subject was opened with the dominie in a very favorable manner.  They were returning from the moors one day and met a party of six men.  They were evidently greatly depressed, but they lifted their bonnets readily to the chief.  There was a hopeless, unhappy look about them that was very painful.

“You have been unsuccessful on the hills, Archie, I fear.”

“There’s few red deer left,” said the man gloomily.  “It used to be deer and men; it is sheep and dogs now.”

After a painful silence the dominie said,

“Something ought to be done for those braw fellows.  They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant.  It would be like harnessing stags in a plough.”

Then Crawford spoke cautiously of his intention, and to his delight the dominie approved it.

“I’ll send them out in Read & Murray’s best ships.  I’ll gie each head o’ a family what you think right, Tallisker, and I’ll put L100 in your hands for special cases o’ help.  And you will speak to the men and their wives for me, for it is a thing I canna bear to do.”

But the men too listened eagerly to the proposition.  They trusted the dominie, and they were weary of picking up a precarious living in hunting and fishing, and relying on the chief in emergencies.  Their old feudal love and reverence still remained in a large measure, but they were quite sensible that everything had changed in their little world, and that they were out of tune with it.  Some few of their number had made their way to India or Canada, and there was a vague dissatisfaction which only required a prospect of change to develop.  As time went on, and the laird’s plan for opening the coal beds on his estate got known, the men became impatient to be gone.