The other story accounts for its flight in a different and somewhat conflicting manner. Tradition, who, as I have already shown, is even a more credulous naturalist than historian, affirms that herrings have a strong antipathy to human blood, especially when spilt in a quarrel. On the last day of the fishing, the nets belonging to two boats became entangled; the crew that first hauled applied the knife to their neighbours’ baulks and meshes, and, with little trouble or damage to themselves, succeeded in unravelling their own. A quarrel was the consequence; and one of the ancient modes of naval warfare, the only one eligible in their circumstances, was resorted to--they fought leaning over the gunwales of their respective boats. Blood was spilt, unfortunately spilt in the sea; the affronted herrings took their departure, and for more than half a century were not the cause, in even the remotest degree, of any quarrel which took place on the Moray Firth or its shores. One of the combatants, who distinguished himself either by doing or suffering in this unlucky fray, was known ever after by the name of Andrew _Bleed_; and there are men still living who remember to have seen him. [Sidenote: URQUHART OF GREENHILL.] The failure of the herring trade was followed by that of Urquhart of Greenhill. He is said to have been a shrewd industrious man, of great force of character, and admirably fitted by nature and habit, had he lived in better times, to have restored the dilapidated fortunes of his house. During the reign of William he was adding ship to ship, and field to field, until about the year 1700, when he was possessed of nearly one-half the lands of the parish, and of five large vessels. But it was his lot to speculate in an unfortunate age; and having, with almost all the other merchants of Scotland, suffered severely from the Union, the failure of the herring fishery completed his ruin. He sank by inches; striving to the last, with a proud heart and a bitter spirit, against the evils which assailed him. All his ships were at length either knocked down by the hammer of the auctioneer, or broken up by the maul of the carpenter, except one; and that one, the Swallow of Cromartie, when returning homewards from some port of the Continent, was driven ashore in a violent night-storm on the rocky coast of Cadboll, and beaten to pieces before morning. It was with difficulty the crew was saved. One of them, a raw young fellow, a much better herdsman than sailor, escaped to his friends, full of the wild scenes he had just witnessed, and set himself to relate to them the particulars of his voyage;--it was his first and his last. Smooth water and easy sailing may be delineated in common language; he warmed, however, as the narrative proceeded. He described the gathering of the tempest, the darkening of the night, the dashing of the waves, the howling of the winds, and the rolling of the vessel; but