Before morning, about sixty large sacks, the lading of the three boats, were lodged in a cellar, possessed, says my authority, by Mr. James Rabson, a meal and corn merchant of Cromarty; but James, though fully authorized by all his neighbours to dole out the contents to the inhabitants, and account to Simpson for the money, prudently lodged his key under the door, and set out for the country on some pretext of business. In the meanwhile Simpson applied to the Sheriff of the county, a warrant was granted him, the meal was seized in behalf of the proper owner; and the pacific Mr. Donald Sandison was appointed, on the recommendation of the Sheriff, to stand sentry over it. On the following day, a posse of law-officers from the ancient burgh of Tain, the farmers and farm-servants of Easter-Ross, and Simpson and the sailors, were to come, it was said, to transport his charge from the cellar to the vessel. Sandison, with a half-ludicrous, half-melancholy expression of face, took up his station before the door; and enveloped in his greatcoat, but encumbered with neither pistols nor broadsword, he stalked up and down before it until morning. About two hours after sunrise, four large boats, crowded with people, were seen approaching the town, and, in a few minutes after, seven-eighths of the whole inhabitants, men, women, and children, armed with stones and bludgeons, were drawn out on the beach to oppose their landing. Such an assemblage! _There_ were the parish schoolboys, active little fellows, that could hit to a hair’s-breadth; and _there_ the town apprentices of all denominations, stripped of their jackets, and with their aprons puffed out before them with well-selected pebbles. _There_, too, were the women of the place, ranged tier beyond tier, from the water’s edge to the houses behind, and of all ages and aspects, from the girl that had not yet left school, to the crone that had hobbled from her cottage assisted by her crutch. The lanes were occupied by full-grown men, who, armed with bludgeons, reserved themselves for the final charge, and now crouched behind their wives and sisters to avoid being seen from the boats. A few young lads, choice spirits of the place, had climbed up to the ridges of the low cottages, which at that time presented, in this part of the town, a line parallel to the beach. Some of them were armed with pistols, some with satchels full of stones; and farther up the lanes there was a second party of women, who meditated an attack on Rabson’s cellar. Dire was the combination of sound. The boys shouted, the girls shrieked, the apprentices, tapping their fingers against their throats, bleated like sheep in mockery of the farmers, the women yelled out their defiance in one continuous howl, interrupted occasionally by the hoarse exclamations and loud huzzas of the men. The boats advanced by inches. After every few strokes, the rowers would pause over their oars, and wrench themselves half round to reconnoitre the myriads of