as he rushed in to the rescue, floored him with a single blow. The day was all her own in a twinkling; the Highlanders fled, one of them half-choked by the meal, the other more than half-throttled by Nannie; but glad, notwithstanding, to get off so well. [Sidenote: THE RETREAT.] In the middle of the spulzie a sloop of war hove in sight, and a boat was seen shooting out to meet her from under the rocks of the hill. Sail after sail was run out on her yards as soon as the boat touched her side, and she came careering up the Firth like an angry giant. The Highlanders gathered in the street, and, according to old Dunbar, Fu’ loud in Ershe they begowt to clatter, And rouped like revin and ruke. One of them, who seemed to have drunk freely, was hacking with his broadsword at the rails of a wooden bridge, and swearing furiously at the ship; and a little girl, who chanced to be passing with a jug of milk, was so terrified that she fell and broke the jug. “Poor sing, poor sing!” said the Highlander, as he raised her and wiped her face with the corner of his plaid, “hersel’ widna hurt a pit o’ you.” The party, in their retreat, took the road that passes towards the west, along the edge of the bay; and no sooner had the sloop cleared the intervening headland, than she began to fire on them. One of the bullets struck off a piece from a large granite boulder on the shore termed the _Pindler_, and in less than half a minute the Highlanders were scattered over the face of the hill. They did not again return to Cromarty. Though they fared better in their predatory excursions than most of their countrymen who accompanied the Prince, and transferred to their homes much of the “plenishing” of the Lowlands, it was observed that in few instances did their gains enrich their descendants. I once wrought in the same shed with an old mason, a native of the parish of Urquhart, who, in giving me a history of his early life, told me that his father had left at his death a considerable sum of money to himself and three brothers, and that not one of them was sober for two days together until they had squandered the whole. “And no wonder,” remarked another mason from the same parish, who was hewing beside him; “your father went out a-harrying in the Forty-Five, and muckle did he bring back with him, but it was ill gotten, and couldna last.”