And I will tell it to you, tere iss a pape
in this house, and tere was pe none when Tuncan she'll co away."
"We a' ken ye ha'e the second sicht," said Mrs Findlay, who had
not expected such a reply; "an' it was only o' the first I spak.
Haith! it wad be ill set o' me to anger ye the moment ye come back
to yer ain. Sit ye doon there by the chimla neuk, till I mask ye
a dish o' tay. Or maybe ye wad prefar a drap o' parritch an' milk?
It's no muckle I ha'e to offer ye, but ye cudna be mair walcome."
As easily appeased as irritated, the old man sat down with a
grateful, placid look, and while the tea was drawing Mrs Findlay, by
judicious questions, gathered from him the history of his adventures.
Unable to rise above the disappointment and chagrin of finding
that the boy he loved as his own soul, and had brought up as his
own son was actually the child of a Campbell woman, one of the
race to which belonged the murderer of his people in Glencoe, and
which therefore he hated with an absolute passion of hatred, unable
also to endure the terrible schism in his being occasioned by the
conflict between horror at the Campbell blood, and ineffaceable
affection for the youth in whose veins it ran, and who so fully
deserved all the love he had lavished upon him, he had concluded to
rid himself of all the associations of place and people and event
now grown so painful, to make his way back to his native Glencoe,
and there endure his humiliation as best he might, beheld of the
mountains which had beheld the ruin of his race.
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