Ringan had ever been known as well for his rigid ideas of faith and honour as for his great strength and undaunted courage, and these qualities had brought him greatly into the esteem and friendship of his landlord, one of the earliest of the Marquesses of Lothian.  It is said that when the Marquess, towards the end of his life, found it necessary to take what was then the tedious and toilsome journey to London, he sent for Ringan, and giving him the key of a room in Ferniehurst in which were kept important and valuable deeds and family papers, charged him on no account to allow anyone to enter the room or to interfere with the papers until he (the Marquess) should return.  It happened, however, shortly after Lord Lothian’s departure that his heir had occasion to wish to enter this locked room, and he sent to demand the key from Ringan.  The old man, naturally and rightly, refused to depart from the instructions he had received when the key was delivered to him, and the reply he sent to the young lord may probably have been somewhat blunt and uncompromising.  In any case, hot words passed between him and the indignant heir, who considered, perhaps not unnaturally, that prohibition to enter the locked room, to whomsoever else it might apply, certainly could not under any circumstances apply to him.  Perhaps had he gone in the first instance himself to Ringan and explained matters the affair might without much difficulty have been arranged.  But he had taken the other course, and had demanded the key as a matter of right.  Hence came hot words between the two, and the upshot was that the younger man left boiling with resentment at the “old Cameronian devil, Ringan Oliver,” and threatening to pay him out.

No very long time after this the old Marquess died, and Ringan’s enemy reigned in his stead.  Nor was it long ere he began to show that no portion of the wrath conceived by him against the old man had been allowed to die for want of nursing.  One September day, when Ringan’s crop was all but ready to cut, there came across the water from Ferniehurst the new Marquess accompanied by several mounted men, servants, and others, with dogs.  Soon the party began riding over the farm, ostensibly looking for hares; finally, they all went into the standing crop, trampling it down wantonly, hallooing their dogs here, there, and everywhere, and galloping furiously about wherever the corn stood thickest.  Ringan had been rapidly becoming more and more angry as he found that the damage done was so manifestly wilful damage; and at last, finding remonstrance to be so much waste of breath, he snatched up an old musket, which possibly had not seen the light since Killiecrankie, and shot one of the dogs.

That was enough for the Marquess; he had got the old man in the wrong now.  Off he went at once and lodged with the Sheriff of Roxburghshire a complaint against Ringan, and a summons was issued.  Ringan refused to appear in court.

“Na!” he said.  “I’ve done nae wrong.  I daur them to lay a hand on me.”