Xll INTRODUCTION. 



he stoutly denied having issued notices to the effect that an 

 additional rent of 2 should be charged against any one 

 opening a small shop for the sale of groceries and provisions. 

 The Rev. Finlay Graham, Free Church Minister of Sleat, 

 however, in answer to the chairman, after having expressed 

 reluctance to do so, said, "/ have seen the notice; to the best 

 of my knowledge it was this that any shopkeeper in Sleat 

 or Broadford would not be allowed to sell goods without an 

 additional 2 of rent ". In answer to another question, 

 the reverend gentleman said, " The general feeling in the 

 district was, ' What are we coming to ! ' I could not say 

 how long the notice was left, but I saw it on the door of 

 the Inn at Isle Ornsay." Tormore replied, " I have no 

 hesitation in saying, if that notice was put up, it must have 

 been a forgery. I never ordered that notice to be put up, 

 and the Innkeeper and his son are here to corroborate that 

 no such notice was put up. The only way that I can 

 account for it is this I did put up a notice to the very 

 effect that was borne out by Mr. Graham, not on this pro- 

 perty, but on the property of Glendale. ... I must 

 emphatically state that I put up no notices in the parishes of 

 Strath and Sleat, but I did so in Glendale." At Portree, 

 however, he admitted " that he might have been mistaken 

 when denying that a notice had been put on the Inn doors 

 as to a rent to be charged against shops " in Sleat and 

 Broadford. He did not deny that he compelled the incom- 

 ing tenants to pay the arrears of their predecessors. The 

 statements of the Glendale people to that effect were fully 

 corroborated by several witnesses in Sleat, one saying, that 

 ' the rule of the Estate was that the incoming tenant should 

 pay the arrears of the out-going tenant," and another that it 

 was a common practice. " I know it was the rule," he says, 

 and " I know that Tormore, the factor, was demanding 



