Not many gaugers were so lion-hearted as this; but one, at least, was even more so. This rash hero one day met two smugglers in a solitary situation. They had a cart loaded up with whisky-kegs, and when the official, unaided, and with no human help near, proposed single-handed to seize their consignment and to arrest them, they must have been as genuinely astonished as ever men have been. The daring man stood there, purposeful of doing his duty, and really in grave danger of his life; but these two smugglers, relishing the humour of the thing, merely descended from their cart, and, seizing him and binding him hand and foot, sat him down in the middle of the road with wrists tied over his knees and a stick through the crook of his legs, in the “trussed fowl” fashion. There, in the middle of the highway, they proposed to leave him; but when he pitifully entreated not to be left there, as he might be run over and killed in the dark, they considerately carried him to the roadside; with saturnine humour remarking that he would probably be starved there instead, before he would be noticed. [Picture: Smugglers hiding goods in a tomb] The flood-tide of Government prosecutions of the “sma’ stills” was reached in 1823–5, when an average of one thousand four hundred cases annually was reached. These were variously for actual distilling, or for the illegal possession of malt, for which offence very heavy penalties were exacted. Preventive men were stationed thickly over the face of the Highlands, the system then employed being the establishment of “Preventive Stations” in important districts, and “Preventive Rides” in less important neighbourhoods. The stations consisted of an officer and one or two men, who were expected by the regulations not to sleep at the station more than six nights in the fortnight. During the other eight days and nights they were to be on outside duty. A ride was a solitary affair, of one exciseman. Placed in authority over the stations were “supervisors,” who had each five stations under his charge, which he was bound to visit once a week.