208 A HUNDRED YEARS 



places. Indeed, I had an unpleasant time getting them 

 to allow the Conon tenants to carry the body from 

 Conon to the Highfield march towards Beauly. So our 

 next halt was at the door of Conon, once dearly loved by 

 our charge, and all of us were glad that we had got over so 

 much of our undertaking so wisely and well. We rested 

 till next day at one o'clock, when what some would think 

 a more impressive procession accompanied us, in a 

 crowd of carriages and riders, to Beauly. We had a 

 very long day's walk at not under three and a half to 

 four miles an hour between Kenlochewe and Conon, 

 and though all our men were trained to boating and not 

 to steady walking, not one fell out of our ranks all the 

 way ; but a crowd of them lay down on the Conon lawn 

 the moment we halted, and some were hardly able to 

 move to the straw-bedded Conon granaries, where plenty 

 of the best food gave them fresh strength for their last 

 march. 



*' After the luncheon in Conon House, and after 

 thanking our sympathising visitors, I marshalled our 

 men and we walked off, the six-foot company leading, 

 just as we had left Tigh Dige and Kenlochewe, the 

 carriages and riders following. At the lodge gate the 

 Conon tenants and hundreds of others disorganised us, 

 as they wished to carry the coffin, and had our Gairloch 

 men had but the least drop of whisky there would have 

 been a serious fight. However, I compromised matters 

 by getting them to let the Conon people carry the body 

 to the Highfield march, and then we resumed our 

 arrangement of the two previous days till we entered 

 the Beauly Priory, where we found old John Eraser, the 



