Even the Lord-Lieutenant and the old hereditary sheriffs at Lochnaw were displeased by any display of military force. They resented it, as the intervention of troops has always been resented in Galloway. What could the Government be thinking of? Why not let them settle matters in their own way? They were bound officially, of course, to give the business their countenance. Really, they liked it no better than did any member of Stair Garland's band. Earl Raincy, the Stairs of Castle Kennedy, the Monreith Maxwells, the Garthlands, and my Lord Garlies felt themselves perfectly well able to maintain order in their own lands. They could have removed Julian Wemyss to a quiet place over-seas, there to abide till the Wargrove affair had blown over. Who thought the worse of him for putting ten inches of steel through the pandar of a royal Duke, who had treated Adam Ferris's daughter as if she walked the pavement of Piccadilly or the Palais Royal? And as for Stair Garland--well, their lads would smuggle. They always had smuggled. But he was a good and a safe leader, who took his young men into no mischief and allowed no ribaldry or contempt for local authority. What more could be hoped for or expected, as long as young blood ran in young veins? And as to the little matter of the slugs in the royal haunches--well, the man was more frighted than hurt, and the twinges when the wind blew from the east would remind even a royal duke to leave their maids alone. If belted earls and honourable baronets, the men of ancientest lineage, thought thus--consider what was the fierceness of public opinion among the farmers and their folk--the herds on the hills, the ploughmen and cattlemen, the crowds that gathered at kirk and market. The provisions for the investing forces had actually to be brought from Ireland, for the country wives suddenly discovered that they had nothing to sell. Shops in town received known clients at the back door and served them behind closed shutters in the murky gleam of a halfpenny "dip." Had it not been for half-a-dozen sappers who had been busy with the new naval base on Loch Swilly, his Majesty's forces would have been starved out of the country, and Galloway would have added one more to its long tale of the triumphs of passive resistance. But the six Loch Swilly men had served in the Peninsula, and they were under a Chatham sergeant, who was a perfect Gallio, in that he cared nothing about all the things which were distracting the westernmost end of Galloway which gives on the Atlantic. He looked at the Wild of Blairmore from several sides. He swore that such a set of asses he had never seen, and then he settled himself, with his five soldiers and a couple of score of impressed men, to make a cutting through the sand-dunes on the seaward side. This ditch or drain, now smooth and greyish-green with bent and self-sown saplings, is still known as the Sapper's Cut.