CHAPTER LIV: THE FEY FACTOR
When Mr Crathie heard of the outrage the people of Scaurnose had
committed upon the surveyors, he vowed be would empty every house
in the place at Michaelmas. His wife warned him that such a wholesale
proceeding must put him in the wrong with the country, seeing they
could not all have been guilty. He replied it would be impossible,
the rascals hung so together, to find out the ringleaders
even. She returned that they all deserved it, and that a correct
discrimination was of no consequence; it would be enough to the
purpose if he made a difference. People would then say he had done
his best to distinguish. The factor was persuaded and made out a
list of those who were to leave, in which he took care to include
all the principal men, to whom he gave warning forthwith to quit
their houses at Michaelmas. I do not know whether the notice was
in law sufficient, but exception was not taken on that score.
Scaurnose, on the receipt of the papers, all at the same time, by
the hand of the bellman of Portlossie, was like a hive about to
swarm. Endless and complicated were the comings and goings between
the houses, the dialogues, confabulations, and consultations, in
the one street and its many closes. In the middle of it, in front
of the little public house, stood, all that day and the next, a group
of men and women, for no five minutes in its component parts the
same, but, like a cloud, ever slow dissolving, and as continuously
reforming, some dropping away, others falling to.
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