God gave them the summer breeze to purify their blood, the sun of heaven to irradiate the bleakness of their mountains, the morning and evening dressed in all their beauty, and music of their mountain streams, and that of the feathered songsters, to enliven their souls with its melody.

The voices of spring, of summer, of autumn, were cheerful in their ears as the voices of friends, and even winter, with all his wildness and desolation, was not without a grim complacence which they loved.

They were a poor, harmless, little community, so very humble and inoffensive, as to be absolutely beneath the reach of human resentment or injustice.

Alas! they were not so.
The cause of the oppression which was now about to place them in its iron grasp, was as simple as it was iniquitous.

They refused to vote for Lord Cumber's brother, and were independent enough to respect the rights of conscience, in defiance of M'Clutchy's denunciations.