Some entries referring to "the boys in the Tolbooth," or, more briefly, the prisoners," remind us, were this necessary, that these accounts related to persons kept in bondage. Other parts indicate the comprehensive nature of the business done in "the servant trade." Thus, on the 12th of May, there is a charge of 7s. 6d. "to three days' board of ten servants from the Tolbooth;" and on the same day, "to five days' board of thirty-four servants, £2, 2s. 6d." The latter number is frequently repeated in the account, and probably represents the stock of one considerable holder. It was estimated by the witnesses that sixty-nine were transported in one cargo in 1743; "and when," says a writer already alluded to, "it is considered that the trade was carried on to an equal extent for nearly six years, it is impossible to estimate the number of unhappy beings carried off at less than six hundred.[20] [20] _Book of Bon Accord_, 90. We have endeavoured in our account of these transactions to be sternly and rigidly prosaic,--perhaps our readers may think we have no great merit in accomplishing such a resolution, but we also take merit for having adhered to the facts attested with impartial accuracy. To afford some relief to the plainness of our detail, we shall wind it up by treating the reader to a part of the eloquent and denunciatory exordium of Williamson's counsel, Maclaurin, brother of the great mathematician. "Persons of every character, sex, and age, were kidnapped,--men, women, half-grown lads, and infants, some of them not above six years old. The whole country was in terror and consternation, afraid to let their children go near Aberdeen, and trembling for fear of a kidnapping excursion from that place. The unfortunate creatures that had been wheedled or pressed into the service, were at first confined in a barn or workhouse, where they had a piper to play to them, and cards allowed them, in order to hinder them to think, or meditate their escape; but that they soon attempted, and one or two of them with success; upon which the rest were shut up in the Tolbooth.