pot slung on an immensely long iron hook, gave symptoms of something to eat. But the fire burned clear, and the good woman and her daughter were preparing supper for the people who had been on the shore. She offered her visitors some brandy; and Whiggans' seizing a glass as if he had tasted nothing for a week, "To your roof-tree, lucky!" said he, and drank it off. St. Clyde tasted his, wishing health to the woman and her family; for he had travelled too much to feel any squeamishness about either the smoke that was now finding its way out of the hut, the appearance of the children, or another glass than that out of which Whiggans drank.

After supping and settling privately with the merchants, Whiggans and his people prepared to leave the shore again, and were accompanied by St. Clyde. As soon as they got on

board, Whiggans gave orders to sail up the loch for a cargo of whiskey, which he intended to carry to loch Ryan, or rather to Stranrawer; and as the morning twilight disclosed to St. Clyde's view the majestic mountains, south of Kildnan, piled one above another, raising their lofty summits above the clouds that swept a passage beneath their huge naked tops, a sail was discovered coming down the loch, and Whiggans instantly altered his course, but cleared his vessel for action, supposing, as it afterwards turned out, that the strange sail was one of the excise cutters.

Though Whiggans's vessel sailed remarkably well, the wind was rather scant to weather the Cape and get into Kilbrannin Sound, and the cutter now appeared bearing down upon them with a heavy press of sail. Unawed by her superior size, the daring

outlaw run his lugger close in shore, trusting, if the cutter pursued him, that the Argyle Highlanders would lend him their assistance in the defence of his vessel.

St. Clyde was in the worst predicament a loyal subject could be in. He had twice led on his company in the face and fire of a battery of cannon, and he knew what it was to shed his blood in defence of the colonies of Great Britain; but here he was a passenger on board a vessel whose crew would not easily yield. Seeing the dilemma into which he was accidentally and unwittingly cast, he begged Whiggans to land him before they engaged the cutter. "That was impossible; the coast was a bold, rocky shore; but an officer of the Highland Watch would not be required to fight against a ship of the navy.'

The cutter came down in a very

handsome style, with the blue ensign at her gaff end, and the union jack flying at her mast head. The smuggler kept a black flag flying at her main mast, and now the cutter luffing up within hail, poured her starboard broadside into the smuggler.

The

cutter had sixteen guns, and the smuggler only eight, which were also much beneath the others in weight of metal. The smugglers flinched not from their guns, and when the cutter appeared to be going to lay the lugger on board, with the intention of carrying her by the irresistible fury of boarding-pikes and cutlasses, Whiggans ran her into a small mole on the western shore, the passage of which was defended by a very dangerous ridge of rocks, and, the water breaking nearly across its mouth, had very lit tle appearance of any entrance. But this he did, as there were some people

on the margin of the creek prepared to render him every facility of escape, provided he could not defend the vessel.

The cutter pursued close in the smuggler's wake, who made another gallant but unsuccessful attempt to get off by hauling his wind to get out by the northern entrance; but this manœuvre brought the vessels considerably nearer to each other, and the cutter's only chance was to luff up and risk another broadside, which carried away the lugger's foremast and bowsprit. The lugger being now unmanageable, drifted on the rock; her hardy crew still keeping up a terrible fire on the cutter, until she ran alongside. The lugger now fell under the bows of the cutter, whose crew rushed in upon the smugglers. But though every one of these men was armed with a brace of pistols, a tomahawk, and a cutlass,