with a two-foot rule were making roads and building jetties for
coal-smacks to lie at. There was constant influx of strange men and
women--men of stunted growth and white faces, and who had an insolent,
swaggering air, intolerably vulgar when contrasted with the Doric
simplicity and quiet gigantic manhood of the mountain shepherds.

The new workers were, however, mainly Lowland Scotchmen from the
mining districts of Ayrshire. The dominie had set himself positively
against the introduction of a popish element and an alien people; and
in this position he had been warmly upheld by Farquharson and the
neighboring proprietors. As it was, there was an antagonism likely to
give him full employment. The Gael of the mountains regarded these
Lowland "working bodies" with something of that disdain which a rich
and cultivated man feels for kin, not only poor, but of contemptible
nature and associations. The Gael was poor truly, but he held himself
as of gentle birth. He had lived by his sword, or by the care of
cattle, hunting, and fishing. Spades, hammers, and looms belonged to
people of another kind.

Besides this great social gulf, there were political and religious
ones still wider. That these differences were traditional, rather than
real, made no distinction. Man have always fought as passionately for
an idea as for a fact. But Dominie Tallisker was a man made for great
requirements and great trusts. He took in the position with the eye of
a general. He watched the two classes passing down the same streets as
far apart as if separated by a continent, and he said, with a very
positive look on his face, "These men are brethren and they ought to
dwell in unity; and, God helping Dugald Tallisker, they will do it,
yes, indeed, they will."