The exile broke off and sighed heavily.  Before the two a little yard, all gay with hollyhocks and roses, sloped down to the wider of the two creeks between which stretched the Fair View plantation.  It was late of a holiday afternoon.  A storm was brewing, darkening all the water, and erecting above the sweep of woods monstrous towers of gray cloud.  There must have been an echo, for MacLean’s sigh came back to him faintly, as became an echo.

“Is there not peace here, ’beyond the sea’?” said Truelove softly.  “Thine must be a dreadful country, Angus MacLean!”

The Highlander looked at her with kindling eyes.  “Now had I the harp of old Murdoch!” he said.

    “’Dear is that land to the east,
      Alba of the lakes! 
      Oh, that I might dwell there forever’”—­

He turned upon the doorstep, and taking between his fingers the hem of Truelove’s apron fell to plaiting it.  “A woman named Deirdre, who lived before the days of Gillean-na-Tuaidhe, made that song.  She was not born in that land, but it was dear to her because she dwelt there with the man whom she loved.  They went away, and the man was slain; and where he was buried, there Deirdre cast herself down and died.”  His voice changed, and all the melancholy of his race, deep, wild, and tender, looked from his eyes.  “If to-day you found yourself in that loved land, if this parched grass were brown heather, if it stretched down to a tarn yonder, if that gray cloud that hath all the seeming of a crag were crag indeed, and eagles plied between the tarn and it,”—­he touched her hand that lay idle now upon her knee,—­“if you came like Deirdre lightly through the heather, and found me lying here, and found more red than should be in the tartan of the MacLeans, what would you do, Truelove?  What would you cry out, Truelove?  How heavy would be thy heart, Truelove?”

Truelove sat in silence, with her eyes upon the sky above the dream crags.  “How heavy would grow thy heart, Truelove, Truelove?” whispered the Highlander.

Up the winding water, to the sedges and reeds below the little yard, glided the boy Ephraim in his boat.  The Quakeress started, and the color flamed into her gentle face.  She took up the distaff that she had dropped, and fell to work again.  “Thee must not speak to me so, Angus MacLean,” she said.  “I trust that my heart is not hard.  Thy death would grieve me, and my father and my mother and Ephraim”—­

“I care not for thy father and mother and Ephraim!” MacLean began impetuously.  “But you do right to chide me.  Once I knew a green glen where maidens were fain when paused at their doors Angus, son of Hector, son of Lachlan, son of Murdoch, son of Angus that was named for Angus Mor, who was great-grandson of Hector of the Battles, who was son of Lachlan Lubanach!  But here I am a landless man, with none to do me honor,—­a wretch bereft of liberty”—­