them, as they should all put themselves under his command on the land." This was a proposition Colin could not refuse to obey in consistency with his duty to his country; but he begged to be landed, as he was going to Mull with as much haste as possible. It was to no purpose he urged this plea; the exciseman and the mate pressed him hard, and urged him the more forcibly, the more reluctant he seemed; and St. Clyde, at length, yielded to their entreaties.

The Ajax, that was the cutter's name, was now steered for that part of the western shore of the loch where the smugglers had landed, that St. Clyde, and those under his command, might try and get some intimation from the country people as to the direction Whiggans and his men had taken. The mate of the cutter, and St. Clyde, could get no satisfactory intel

ligence from the mountaineers; and one young man whom they fell in with, that had been a herd in the Lowlands, and who spoke a little Saxon, when asked about Whiggans, gave either an indirect answer, or having maturely considered what was fittest to say, replied that he knew nothing about the "manks-men."

The gaugers wanted to force this youth to tell something," as they expressed it; but he preserved a strict silence as to the route of the "manksmen."

However it was indirectly hinted by another youth, that the smugglers had gone to Skipness, where they got a friend to put them over into Arran. The gaugers knew that that country was the well-caverned retreat of all the ruined “manks-men," and they made sure of securing Whiggans and some of his men. The Ajax steered for

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Brodick Bay; her people landed, and commenced their search over gradually rising hills, with here and there a winding hollow, which the torrents from the upper mountains had ploughed out in their passage to the sea. But St. Clyde found, on casting his eye in advance, that the hills were piled one upon another, till the complicated masses appeared fainter and fainter in aërial perspective, and the ridges of the more distant mountains were lost in ether, whilst the nearer by their rugged and irregular appearance, where the eye could penetrate any distance among them, gave the whole a degree of sublimity and grandeur that can scarcely be conceived to exist so near the sea-coast, except in Arran.

The whole party pursued their route through the winding pathways of the hill, till they came to a glen defended on each side by prodigious craggy rocks, which

cast their shadow in the morning and evening from the one to the other; and as the glen rose pretty rapidly among the hills, the utmost caution was necessary to look out, that the "grey mare's tail" was not beginning to grow, as a heavy shower on the upper mountains would have rendered their situation very perilous indeed.

St. Clyde and the excisemen being on schelties, had frequently to dismount and leave the little animals to get down the crags and precipices as well as they could; but the parallel ridges of rock now began to bend their rough heads to each other over the glen, and the water rolled its murmuring torrent in furious disdain against opposing rocks beneath.

There was no trace of a human habitation to be seen in the solemn scene; no sound save their own voices; and the waters gave an awful pleasure to this sequestered spot. At last, after tra

versing for several hours the brink of this stream, embossed in the grandest furrow of rock, a small bridge of two rough trees showed their route was practicable only on the other side of the glen. The men easily got over these sticks, and the schelties were dragged through the torrent, at the risk of being drowned with the surge.

At length the appearance of a man on the face of the rock, intimated that now the pursuers were approaching the den of the outlaws; but as this man fled at their approach, they were induced to pursue him as closely as possible; and, seeing him dive into a thick wood that skirted the base of the rocks, they all followed him, but he was soon out of it again, and plunged into the torrent above the waist, and got to the opposite bank. His pursuers cast themselves into a rank, the strongest men and best able to resist the force of the torrent being in the front, the