Shaw had many smart encounters with the excise, in which he generally managed to get the best of it. The most dramatic of these was probably the exploit that befell when he was captaining a party of smugglers conveying two hundred kegs of whisky from the mountains down to Perth. The time was winter, and snow lay thick on field and fell; but the journey was made in daytime, for they were a numerous band and well armed, and feared no one. But the local Supervisor of Excise had by some means obtained early news of this expedition, and had secured the aid of a detachment of six troopers of the Scots Greys at Coupar-Angus, part of a squadron stationed at Perth. At the head of this little force rode the supervisor. They came in touch with the smugglers at Cairnwell, in the Spittal of Glenshee. “Gang aff awa’ wi’ ye, quietly back up the Spittal,” exclaimed the supervisor, “and leave the seizure to us.” “Na, faith,” replied Shaw; “ye’ll get jist what we care to gie!” “Say ye so?” returned the excise officer hotly. “I’ll hae the whole or nane!” The blood rose in Shaw’s head, and swelled out the veins of his temples. “By God,” he swore, “I’ll shoot every gauger here before ye’ll get a drap!” The supervisor was a small man with a bold spirit. He turned to his cavalry escort with the order “Fire!” and at the same time reached for Shaw’s collar, with the exclamation, “Ye’ve given me the slip often enough, Shaw! Yield now, I’ve a pistol in each pocket of my breeches.” “Have ye so?” coolly returned the immense and statuesque Shaw, “it’s no’ lang they’ll be there, then!” and with that he laid violent hands upon each pocket and so picked the exciseman bodily out of his saddle, tore out both pistols and pockets, and then pitched him, as easily as an ordinary man could have done a baby, head over heels into a snow-drift. Meanwhile, the soldiers had not fired; rightly considering that, as they were so greatly outnumbered, to do so would be only the signal for an affray in which they would surely be worsted. A wordy wrangle then followed, in which the exciseman and the soldiers pointed out that they could not possibly go back empty-handed; and in the end, Shaw and his brother smugglers went their way, leaving four kegs behind, “just out o’ ceeveelity,” and as some sort of salve for the wounded honour of the law and its armed coadjutors.