218 A HUNDRED YEARS 



like many well-doing crofters, Norman had a poke of 

 money in my hands in case of a rainy day, people like 

 him dreading their friends knowing they were ' men of 

 money,' which would leave them no rest till it was all 

 borrowed from them; so I wrote to our agent telling him, 

 if he got Norman's consent, to pay the fine and put 

 to my debit his £30 fine, then loose him, and let him 

 go home. But the few days in the far too cosy gaol 

 had quite dispelled Norman's sense of degradation, so 

 he declined to pay the fine, and at the end of the month 

 he came home, if a sadder and wiser man, at any rate 

 not a poorer one ! 



" Why does any accident happening to a ganger give 

 general pleasure — far more so than an accident to a 

 policeman ? I have heard of a Strathglass ganger being 

 quietly murdered. It was known he would on such a 

 day and hour be riding to where he knew a bothy was 

 in full work. One part of the road wound round a 

 corner where a step missed would probably land horse 

 and rider one hundred feet below in a horrid rocky 

 ravine. As he came round the corner a woman rose up 

 from the side of the road and suddenly threw her gown 

 over her head in an apparently innocent fashion to 

 shelter herself from the wind; the horse instantly 

 lurched over into the ravine, and both it and its rider 

 soon died from the accident (?) to the sorrow (?) of the 

 smugglers. 



*' Sometimes the Dingwall Sheriff was not so ready 

 to imprison law-breakers as he was in Norman's case. 

 One day when I was factor for Gairloch a boat's crew 

 from Craig brought before me at Tigh Dige one of their 

 neighbours who had been caught red-handed killing 



