s_ at the foot of one of the cliffs in which the granite
hills break westward towards the Atlantic.

Roy Campbell, the watcher, was a grey-headed man, slack in the twist but
limber in the joints--distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye
and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and
nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths
like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the
best and the most daring man of a company who had taken daring as their
stock-in-trade.

It was in the palmy days of the traffic with the Isle of Man, when that
tight little island supplied the best French brandy for the drouthy
lairds of half Scotland, also lace for the "keps" and stomachers of
their dames, not to speak of the Sabbath silks of the farmer's goodwife,
wherein she brawly showed that she had as proper a respect for herself
in the house of God as my lady herself.

Solway shore was a lively place in those days, and it was worth
something to be in the swim of the traffic; ay, or even to have a snug
farmhouse, with perhaps a hidden cellar or two, on the main trade-routes
to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Much of the stuff was run by the "Rerrick
Nighthawks," gallant lads who looked upon the danger of the business as
a token of high spirit, and considered that the revenue laws of the land
were simply made to be broken--an opinion in which they were upheld
generally by the people of the whole countryside, not excepting even
those of the austere and Covenanting sort.

How Roy Campbell had found his way among the Westland Whigs is too long
a story to be told--some little trouble connected with the days of the
'45, he said. More likely something about a lass. Suffice it that he had
drawn himself into hold in a lonely squatter shieling deep among the
fastnesses of the Clints o' Drumore. He had built the house with his own
hands. It was commonly known to the few who ventured that way as "The
Back o' Beyont." In the hills behind the hut, which itself lay high on
the brae-face, were many caves, each with its wattling of woven wicker,
over which the heather had been sodded, so that in summer and autumn it
grew as vigorously as upon the solid hill-side. Here Roy Campbell, late
of Glen Dochart, flourished exceedingly, in spite of all the Kennedys of
the South.

So it was that from the Clints o' Drumore and from among the scattered
boulder-shelters around it, Roy and his me