s was well understood by the person to whom it was
given. Soon after a plaid or blanket might be seen spread out, as if
to dry, upon the top of a peat-stack. Other beacons, not calculated
to draw general notice, but sufficiently understood by the initiated,
soon made their appearance, telegraphing the news from place to place.
As soon as the evening began to close in the Crooked Mary would be
observed rapidly approaching the land, and occasionally giving out
signals indicating the creek into which she meant to run. Both on sea
and land hairbreadth escapes were the rule rather than the exception,
and it is related of one of the Crooked Mary's confederates on shore,
poor Philip Kennedy, that one night, while clearing the way for the
cargo just landed from the contraband trader's hold, he was simply
murdered by the excise-officers. The heavy cart laden with the
cargo was yet some distance behind, and Kennedy with some dastardly
companions was slowly going forward to ascertain if all was safe,
when three officers of the customs suddenly made their unwelcome
appearance. Brave as a lion, Kennedy attacked two of them, and
actually succeeded for a time in keeping them down in his powerful
grasp, while he called to his party to secure the third. They,
however, thinking prudence the better part of valor, decamped
ignominiously, and the enemy remained master of the brave man's life.
Anderson, the third officer, was observed to hold up his sword to the
moon, as if to ascertain if he were using the edge, and then to bring
it down with accurate aim and tremendous force upon the smuggler's
skull. Strange to say, Kennedy, streaming with blood, actually
succeeded in reaching Kirkton of Slains, nearly a quarter of a mile
away, but expired a few moments after his arrival. His last words
were: "If all had been true as I was, the goods would have been safe,
and I should not have been bleeding to death." The brave fellow was
buried in the churchyard of Slains, where a plain stone marks his
grave, and bears the simple inscription, "To the memory of Philip
Kennedy, _in Ward_, who died the 19th of December, 1798. Aged 38."

My own earliest recollections of the grand, desolate old castle are
derived, not from my first visit to it made in infancy, but from the
descriptions of one whose home it was during a brief but intensely
observant period of childhood. There came one day a storm such as
seldom even on that coast lashes up the gray, livid ocea