ged with thong points tied
in knots, and with no plaid on the shoulder. I've never seen a more
jaunty and suitable garb for campaigning, better by far for short sharp
tulzies with an enemy than the philamore or the big kilt our people
sometimes throw off them in a skirmish, and fight (the coarsest of them)
in their gartered hose and scrugged bonnets.

With my kilt and the memory of old times about me, I went walking down
to Inneraora in the middle of the day. I was prepared for change from
the complaints of my father, but never for half the change I found in
the burgh town of MacCailein Mor. In my twelve foreign years the place
was swamped by incomers, black unwelcome Covenanters from the shires of
Air and Lanrick--Brices, Yuilles, Rodgers, and Richies--all brought up
here by Gillesbeg Gruamach, Marquis of Argile, to teach his clans the
arts of peace and merchandise. Half the folk I met between the arches
and the Big Barns were strangers that seemingly never had tartan on
their hurdies, but settled down with a firm foot in the place, I could
see by the bold look of them as I passed on the plain-stanes of the
street A queer town this on the edge of Loch Finne, and far in the
Highlands! There were shops with Lowland stuffs in them, and over the
doors signboards telling of the most curious trades for a Campbell
burgh--horologers, cordiners, baxters, and such like mechanicks that I
felt sure poor Donald had small call for. They might be incomers, but
they were thirled to Gillesbeg all the same, as I found later on.

It was the court day, and his lordship was sitting in judgment on two
Strathlachlan fellows, who had been brawling at the Cross the week
before and came to knives, more in a frolic than in hot blood, with some
of the town lads. With two or three old friends I went into the Tolbooth
to see the play--for play it was, I must confess, in town Inneraora,
when justice was due to a man whose name by ill-luck was not Campbell,
or whose bonnet-badge was not the myrtle stem.

The Tolbooth hall was, and is to this day, a spacious high-ceiled room,
well lighted from the bay-side. It was crowded soon after we got
in, with Cowalside fishermen and townpeople all the one way or the
other--for or against the poor lads in bilboes, who sat, simple-looking
enough, between the town officers, a pair of old _bodachs_ in long
scarlet coats and carrying _tuaghs_, Lochaber axes, or halberds that
never smelt blood since they came from t