laids to get a second rent,
and send it over-seas for Ardshiel and his poor bairns. What was it ye
called it, when I told ye?"

"I called it noble, Alan," said I.

"And you little better than a common Whig!" cries Alan. "But when it
came to Colin Roy, the black Campbell blood in him ran wild. He sat
gnashing his teeth at the wine table. What! should a Stewart get a bite
of bread, and him not be able to prevent it? Ah! Red Fox, if ever I
hold you at a gun's end, the Lord have pity upon ye!" (Alan stopped to
swallow down his anger.) "Well, David, what does he do? He declares all
the farms to let. And, thinks he, in his black heart, 'I'll soon get
other tenants that'll overbid these Stewarts, and Maccolls, and Macrobs'
(for these are all names in my clan, David); 'and then,' thinks he,
'Ardshiel will have to hold his bonnet on a French roadside.'"

"Well," said I, "what followed?"

Alan laid down his pipe, which he had long since suffered to go out, and
set his two hands upon his knees.

"Ay," said he, "ye'll never guess that! For these same Stewarts, and
Maccolls, and Macrobs (that had two rents to pay, one to King George
by stark force, and one to Ardshiel by natural kindness) offered him a
better price than any Campbell in all broad Scotland; and far he
sent seeking them--as far as to the sides of Clyde and the cross of
Edinburgh--seeking, and fleeching, and begging them to come, where there
was a Stewart to be starved and a red-headed hound of a Campbell to be
pleasured!"

"Well, Alan," said I, "that is a strange story, and a fine one, too. And
Whig as I may be, I am glad the man was beaten."

"Him beaten?" echoed Alan. "It's little ye ken of Campbells, and less
of the Red Fox. Him beaten? No: nor will be, till his blood's on the
hillside! But if the day comes, David man, that I can find time and
leisure for a bit of hunting, there grows not enough heather in all
Scotland to hide him from my vengeance!"

"Man Alan," said I, "ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to
blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no
harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he
next?"

"And that's a good observe, David," said Alan. "Troth and indeed,
they will do him no harm; the more's the pity! And barring that about
Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae
Christian), I am much of your mind."

"Opinion here or opinion there," said I, "it'