n of high spirit and influence--a banker, and very much a
Whig--at once addressed me with a stern--"By what authority, Sir?" By
the authority, I replied, of five hundred able-bodied men in the
neighbouring town, associated for the protection of themselves and their
families. "Protection against what?" "Protection against the
pestilence;--you come from an infected place." "Do you know what you are
doing, Sir?" said the banker fiercely. "Yes; doing what the law cannot
do for us, but what we have determined to do for ourselves." The banker
grew pale with anger; and he was afterwards heard to say, that had he
had a pistol at the time, he would have shot upon the spot the man who
stopped him; but not having a pistol, he could not shoot me; and so I
sent him and his party away under an escort, to be smoked. And as they
were somewhat obstreperous by the way, and knocked the hat of one of the
guards over his nose, they got, in the fumigating process, as I was
sorry to learn, a double portion of the sulphur and the chloride; and
came into court, to contend with the Tories, gasping for breath. I was
aware I acted on this occasion a very foolish part;--I ought to a
certainty to have run away on the approach of the Inverness cavalcade;
but the running away would have involved, according to Rochester, an
amount of moral courage which I did not possess. I fear, too. I must
admit, that the rough tones of the banker's address stirred up what had
long lain quietly enough in my veins--some of the wild buccaneering
blood of John Feddes and the old seafaring Millers; and so I weakly
remained at my post, and did what the Association deemed my duty. I
trust the banker did not recognise me, and that now, after the lapse of
more than twenty years, he will be inclined to extend to me his
forgiveness. I take this late opportunity of humbly begging his pardon,
and of assuring him, that at the very time I brought him to bay I was
heartily at one with him in his politics. But then my townsfolk, being
much frightened, were perfectly impartial in smoking Whigs and Tories
all alike; and I could bethink me of no eligible mode of exempting my
friends from a process of fumigation which was, I daresay, very
unpleasant, and in whose virtues my faith was assuredly not strong.

When engaged, however, in keeping up our _cordon_ with apparent success,
cholera entered the place in a way on which it was impossible we could
have calculated. A Cromarty fisherman ha