mad wheel of mixed and confused colours, such as children make when they
wheel a stick, dyed white, black, and red, rapidly around. Suspicion,
from the first, fell upon the brother of the boy Rob Paterson, whom
Laing had killed many years before. Revenge is the most enduring,
perhaps, of all the passions, and rather feeds upon itself than decays.
Like fame, "it acquires strength by time;" and it was suspected that Dan
Paterson, a reckless and a dissipated man, had done the deed. In
confirmation of this supposition, Dan was nowhere to be found, and it
was strongly suspected that his wife and his son, who returned at
midnight with the boat, had set Dan on shore somewhere on the coast, and
that he had effected his escape. Death, for some time, seemed every day
and hour nearer at hand; but at last the symptoms softened, the fever
mitigated, the swelling subsided, and, after much careful and skilful
surgery, most admirably conducted by Dr. Goodsir's son, the ball was
extracted. The wound closed without mortification; and, in a week or
two, Mr. Laing was not only out of danger, but out of bed, and walking
about, as he does to this hour, with his arm in a sling. It was about
the period of his recovery, that Dan Paterson was taken as he was
skulking about in the west country, apparently looking out for a ship in
which to sail to America. He was immediately brought back to
Cellardykes, and lodged in Anstruther prison. Mr. Laing would willingly
have forborne the prosecution; but the law behoved to have its course.
Dan was tried for "maiming with the intention of murder," and was
condemned to fourteen years' transportation. This happened in the year
1822, the year of the King's visit to Scotland. Mr. and Mrs. Laing
actually waited upon his Majesty King George the Fourth, at the palace
of Dalkeith, and, backed by the learned judge and counsel, obtained a
commutation of the punishment, from banishment to imprisonment for a
limited period. The great argument in his favour was the provocation he
had received. Dan Paterson now inhabits a neat cottage in the village,
and Mr. Laing has quite set him up with a boat of his own, ready rigged
and fitted for use. He has entirely reformed, has become a member of a
temperance society, and his wife and family are as happy as the day is
long. Mr. and Mrs. Laing are supplied with the very best of fish, and
stockings and mittens are manufactured by the Patersons for the little
Laings, particularly du