This outrage filled the township and all the neighborhood with horror and dismay. A feeling was fast being discussed among the people that the Laird should be lynched. Mr. James McKay, a leading member of the church--a pious and good man, and a warm-hearted neighbor and friend--when he saw the house and barn in flames, exclaimed, "What a pity it is the good old times would not come back again, and a bullet would soon reach him for the deed!" The people got up a subscription, turned out and put up a shanty on another lot, and rendered the family as comfortable as circumstances would permit. James McKay, Mrs. McKay, Duncan McNab, and the writer, two days after the perpetration of the outrage, proceeded to the residence of Mr. Alexander McVicar, the nearest magistrate, and laid the information necessary to commence criminal proceedings against the Chief. Squire McVicar immediately issued his warrant. The Laird was arrested and brought to Pakenham village. All the witnesses for the prosecution were present; Squires Richey, Scott and McVicar took their seats on the bench, and without hearing a witness, or entering into the case at all, dismissed the case, and referred the parties to Perth--to the Assizes. Mr. McVicar did all that he could to get the examination proceeded with, and the Chief committed for trial, but it was useless. The Chief's partizans were on the bench, and they out-voted him, and referred the matter to the Crown officer. Duncan McNab (Isla) and his friends had not the means to go to Perth, or proceed further with the prosecution; and thus the matter rested, and one of the most daring and atrocious crimes in the category of criminal jurisprudence was allowed to pass over with impunity, and the perpetrators to stalk abroad in the land unwhipt of justice. Besides losing his land and provisions, Duncan McNab nearly lost two of his children; and he never received any compensation from the Government, or from the legal tribunals of the law. He was poor, and poverty could be outraged and trampled upon without redress, and scarcely a single remonstrance.