He looked at MacLean with a caustic smile. The latter shrugged his
shoulders. "So long as you tie him neck and heels with a Campbell I am
content," he answered. "Are you going? I'll just bar the windows and lock
the door, and then I'll be off with yonder copper cadet of a French house.
Good-day to you. I'll be back to-night."

"Ye'd better," said the overseer, with another widening of his thin lips.
"For myself, I bear ye no ill-will; for my grandmither--rest her
soul!--came frae the north, and I aye thought a Stewart better became the
throne than a foreign-speaking body frae Hanover. But if the store is not
open the morn I'll raise hue and cry, and that without wasting time. I've
been told ye're great huntsmen in the Highlands; if ye choose to turn red
deer yourself, I'll give ye a chase, _and trade ye down, man, and track ye
down_."

MacLean half turned from the window. "I have hunted the red deer," he
said, "in the land where I was born, and which I shall see no more, and I
have been myself hunted in the land where I shall die. I have run until I
have fallen, and I have felt the teeth of the dogs. Were God to send a
miracle--which he will not do--and I were to go back to the glen and the
crag and the deep birch woods, I suppose that I would hunt again, would
drive the stag to bay, holloing to my hounds, and thinking the sound of
the horns sweet music in my ears. It is the way of the earth. Hunter and
hunted, we make the world and the pity of it."

Setting to work again, he pushed to the heavy shutters. "You'll find them
open in the morning," he said, "and find me selling,--selling clothing
that I may not wear, wine that I may not drink, powder and shot that I may
not spend, swords that I may not use; and giving,--giving pride, manhood,
honor, heart's blood"--