l prosper? I think I see
black Angus coming between you and me with his plans."

Her words and her caress were quite too much for Hamish, and he
surprised himself and her too by a sudden burst of tears. The sight of
this banished Shenac's softness in a moment. She raised herself from
her stooping posture with an angry cry. Separated from the rest of the
fence-makers, and approaching the knoll where the brother and sister
had, been sitting, were two men. One was Angus Dhu, and the other was
his friend, and a relation of his wife, Elder McMillan. He was a good
man, people said, but one who liked to move on with the current,--one
who went for peace at all risks, and so forgot sometimes that purity was
to be set before even peace. There was nothing in Shenac's knowledge of
the man to make her afraid of him, and she took three steps towards
them, and said,--

"Angus Dhu, do you mind what the Bible says of them that oppress the
widow and the fatherless? Have you forgotten the verse that says,
`Remove not the ancient land-mark'?"

She stopped, as if waiting for an answer. The two men stood still from
sheer surprise, and looked at her. Shenac continued:--

"And do you mind what's said of them that add field to field? and--"

"Shenac, my woman," said the elder at last, "it's no becoming in you to
speak in that kind of a way to one older than your father was. I doubt
you're forgetting--"

But Shenac put his words aside with a gesture of indifference.

"And to speak false words of our Allister to his mother in her trouble
as though he had led your wild lad Evan astray. You little know what
our Allister saved him from more than once. But that is not for to-day.
I have this to, say to you, Angus Dhu: you must be content with the
half you have gotten; for not another acre of my father's land shall
ever be yours, though all the elders in Glengarry stood at your back.--I
will not whisht, Hamish. He is to know that he is not to meddle between
my mother and me. It's not or the like of Angus Dhu to say that my
mother's children shall be taken from her in her trouble. Our affairs
may be bad enough, but they'll be none the better for your meddling in
them."

"Shenac," entreated Hamish, "you'll be sorry for speaking that way to
our father's cousin."

"Our father's oppressor rather," she insisted scornfully. But she had
said her say; and, besides, the lads and little Flora had heard their
voices, and were drawing n