es, as Gordon had said,
and a sheriffs officer came to hale them to the Tolbooth for their trial
on behalf of the civil law.

With their appearance there my tale has nothing to do; the Doomster, as
I have said, had the handling of them with birch. What I have described
of this kirk-session's cognisance of those rough fellows' ill behaviour
is designed ingeniously to convey a notion of its strict ceremony and
its wide dominion,--to show that even in the heart of Arraghael we were
not beasts in that year when the red flash of the sword came on us and
the persecution of the torch. The MacNicoll's Night in the Hie Street of
MacCailein Mot's town was an adventure uncommon enough to be spoken of
for years after, and otherwise (except for the little feuds between the
Glens-men and the burghers without tartan), our country-side was as safe
as the heart of France--safer even. You might leave your purse on the
open road anywhere within the Crooked Dyke with uncounted gold in it and
be no penny the poorer at the week's end; there was never lock or bar on
any door in any of the two glens--locks, indeed, were a contrivance the
Lowlanders brought for the first time to the town; and the gardens lay
open to all who had appetite for kail or berry. There was no man who sat
down to dinner (aye in the landward part I speak of; it differed in the
town) without first going to the door to look along the high road to
see if wayfarers were there to share the meal with him and his family.
"There he goes," was the saying about any one who passed the door at
any time without coming in to take a spoon--"there he goes; I'll warrant
he's a miser at home to be so much of a churl abroad" The very gipsy
claimed the cleanest bed in a Glenman's house whenever he came that way,
and his gossip paid handsomely for his shelter.

It was a fine fat land this of ours, mile upon mile thick with herds,
rolling in the grassy season like the seas, growing such lush crops as
the remoter Highlands never dreamt of. Not a foot of good soil but had
its ploughing, or at least gave food to some useful animal, and yet so
rocky the hills between us and lower Lochow, so tremendous steep and
inaccessible the peaks and corries north of Ben Bhuidhe, that they were
relegated to the chase. There had the stag his lodging and the huntsman
a home almost perpetual. It was cosy, indeed, to see at evening the
peat-smoke from well-governed and comfortable hearths lingering on the
quiet