THE TRIAL. 127 



mitted having driven the Borodale sheep from Waterstein 

 on to the crofters' grazings at Milovaig, but still he was on 

 friendly terms with the people. The crofters naturally 

 resented these proceedings of driving strange sheep to eat 

 up the grazing which was already so circumscribed that 

 their own sheep and cattle were half-starving upon it, and 

 they drove back the sheep upon Waterstein, thinking such 

 a proceeding perfectly fair ; and what they considered fair, 

 they thought, in their innocence, must be also perfectly 

 legal. They soon discovered their error, when they came in 

 contact with the Court of Session, acting as judge and jury 

 in their own case. The evidence taken before Lord Shand 

 having been printed, the Judges of the First Division the 

 Lord Justice-General, Lords Deas, Mure, and Shand, met on 

 the 1 5th of March, and heard counsel in the case. Mr. 

 Robertson for the MacLeod Trustees, ably summed up the 

 evidence for his clients, and moved for sentence. 



The Dean of Faculty, in a masterly speech, went over the 

 whole case for the respondents. He said that : 



The first witness called for the petitioners was a man who knew the 

 ground intimately John MacDiarmid and he told them that the mar- 

 ches between Milovaig and Waterstein farm were regularly repaired 

 except last year he (the Dean) presumed by the proprietor so that, as 

 far as the petitioners were concerned, they came forward for the purpose 

 of endeavouring to make out that the respondents had suffered sheep to 

 stray and pasture upon their lands ; while the first thing that was learned 

 about what was done by the petitioners was that, for the first time for 

 many years, nothing was done by the petitioners to put their own fences 

 in proper order. That being so, the next fact to which he wished to 

 call attention was that upon the other side of Milovaig from Waterstein, 

 the factor of these trustees had, upon his own showing, allowed the four 

 crofters of Borodale to have a stock of sheep which he himself admitted 

 the township could not possibly carry that about 100 sheep could be 

 carried by the township, and that last summer, with his consent, the 

 four crofters had 200 sheep upon Borodale. These sheep being too 

 many for Borodale, the Borodale crofters went to Tormore, and asked 



