Towards the evening of the 9th of April 1741, a shopkeeper of Cromarty was half sitting, half reclining, on his counter, humming a tune, and beating time with his ellwand on the point of his shoe. He was a spruce, dapper, little personage, of great flexibility of countenance, full of trick and intrigue, and much noted among his simple town’s-folk for a lawyer-like ingenuity. He was, withal, a man of considerable courage when contemplating a distant danger, but somewhat of a coward when it came near. His various correspondents addressed him by the name of Mr. Alexander Ross--the town’s-people called him Silken Sawney. On an opposite angle of the counter sat Donald Sandison, a tall, robust, red-haired man, who wrought in wood, but whose shop, from the miserable depression of trade, had been shut up for the last two months. He had resided at Edinburgh about five years before; and when there, with another man at Cromarty named Bain, had the satisfaction of escorting the notorious Porteous from the Tolbooth to the Grassmarket; and had been much edified, for he was in at the death, by the earnest remonstrances and dying ejaculations of that worthy. A few days afterwards, however, he found his services to the commonwealth on this occasion so ill appreciated, that he deemed it prudent to quit the metropolis for the place of his nativity. No one had ever heard him boast of the exploit; but Bain, who was a tailor, was not so prudent, and so the story came out. [Sidenote: SANDISON’S SPULZIE.] “Weel, Sandison, what are we gaun to do wi’ the meal ship?” said the shopkeeper, laying down his ellwand, and sitting up erect. “Do wi’ the ship?” replied the mechanic, scratching his head with a half-perplexed, half-humorous expression; “man, I dinna weel ken. It’s bad enough to see a’ yon meal going down the Firth, an’ folk at hame dying o’ hunger!” “But, Sandison,” rejoined the wily shopkeeper, “if it does a’ go down the Firth, I’m just thinking it will be nobodie’s wyte but your ain.” “How that, man?” rejoined Sandison. “I’ll tell you how that, an’ in your ain words too. Whig as ye are, ye say that all men are no born alike. Some come intil the world to do just what they’re bid, an’ go just where they’re bid, and say just what they hear their neebours saying; while ithers, again, come into it to think baith for themsels an’ the folk round them.--Is that no your own sentiment?” “Weel, an’ is it no true?”