He had taken part in long-forgotten agitations, and had suffered eviction in some ancient landlords' quarrel farther north.
Presently he was pouring out to me all the woes of the crofter--woes that seemed so antediluvian and forgotten that I listened as one would listen to an old song.

'You who come from a new country will not haf heard of these things,' he kept telling me, but by that peat fire I made up for my defective education.

He told me of evictions in the year.

One somewhere in Sutherland, and of harsh doings in the Outer Isles.

It was far more than a political grievance.