he clachans of Crawford
and Traquare had lost almost all traces of their old pastoral
character. The coal pit had been opened, and great iron furnaces built
almost at its mouth. Things had gone well with Crawford; the seam had
proved to be unusually rich; and, though the iron had been found, not
on his land, but on the extreme edge of Blair, he was quite satisfied.
Farquharson had struck hands with him over it, and the Blair iron ore
went to the Crawford furnaces to be smelted into pig iron.

Crawford had grown younger in the ardent life he had been leading. No
one would have taken him to be fifty-five years old. He hardly thought
of the past; he only told himself that he had never been as strong and
clear-headed and full of endurance, and that it was probable he had
yet nearly half a century before him. What could he not accomplish in
that time?

But in every earthly success there is a Mordecai sitting in its gate,
and Colin was the uncomfortable feature in the laird's splendid hopes.
He had lounged heartlessly to and from the works; the steady,
mechanical routine of the new life oppressed him, and he had a
thorough dislike for the new order of men with whom he had to come in
contact. The young Crawfords had followed him about the hills with an
almost canine affection and admiration. To them he was always "the
young laird." These sturdy Ayrshire and Galloway men had an old
covenanting rebelliousness about them. They disputed even with Dominie
Tallisker on church government; they sang Robert Burns' most
democratic songs in Crawford's very presence.

Then Colin contrasted them physically with the great fellows he had
been accustomed to see striding over the hills, and he despised the
forms stunted by working in low seams and unhealthy vapors and the
faces white for lack of sunshine and grimy with the all-pervading coal
dust. The giants who toiled in leather masks and leather suits before
the furnaces suited his taste better. When he watched them moving
about amid the din and flames and white-hot metal, he thought of
Vulcan and Mount AEtna, and thus threw over them the enchantments of
the old Roman age. But in their real life the men disappointed him.
They were vulgar and quarrelsome; the poorest Highland gillie had a
vein of poetry in his nature, but these iron-workers were painfully
matter of fact; they could not even understand a courtesy unless it
took the shape of a glass of whiskey.

It was evident to the laird