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 men had been watching this intrusive stranger.  Suddenly Roy gave a cry, and the prospect-glass shook in his hand.  A little after there came the far-away sound of a gun.

“Somebody has let a shot intil him,” said Roy, dancing with excitement, “but it has no’ been a verra good shot, for he’s sittin’ on a stane an’ rubbin’ the croon o’ his hat.  Have I no telled you till I’m tired tellin’ you, that there was no’ be no shootin’ till there was no fear o’ missin’?  It is not good to have to shoot; but it iss a verra great deal waur to shoot an’ miss.  If that’s Gavin Stevenson, the muckle nowt, I declare I’ll brek his ramshackle blunderbuss owre his thick heid.”

Taming for an instant his fury, the old man kept his eye on the distant point of interest, and the others fixed their eyes on him.  Suddenly he leapt to his feet, uttering what, by the sound, were very strong words indeed, for they were in the Gaelic, a language in which it is good and mouth-filling to read the imprecatory psalms.  When at last his feelings subsided to the point when his English returned to him, he said—­

“May I, Roy Campbell, be boiled in my ain still-kettle, distilled through my ain worm, an’ drucken by a set o’ reckless loons, if that’s no my ain Flora that’s speakin’ till the man himsel’!”

The old man himself seemed much calmed either by the outbreak or by the discovery he had made; but on several of the younger men among his followers the news seemed to have an opposite effect.