CHAPTER X. 



SEASON 1874-75 continued. 



CONSTRUCTION CRAIGEND. 



I MUST return a little to bring the work at Craigend up to 

 date. In years gone by the house itself had been a distillery, and 

 an old dam, broken and decayed, and planted up with fir-trees, 

 could still be traced in the little ravine running from the lodge to 

 the muir. Still higher, and to the left, on a neighbouring property, 

 lies the Black dam, famed in local story as the guardian of many 

 a cask of whisky. Some time in the beginning of the present cen- 

 tury, when the old distillery was about to be subjected to a more 

 than formal visit by the Excise, it was thought unadvisable to 

 give a too cordial reception to the officers of the Crown, and so 

 successfully were they delayed, that when, some three weeks 

 afterwards, a company of soldiers arrived to reinforce them, and 

 prudence forbade any further discourtesy to the representatives of 

 the law, not a single gallon of spirit was found. Whether the 

 whisky had been poured down the large conduits which pass 

 below the house, and at first drained the ponds at Craigend, in a 

 mysterious manner, or whether the casks had actually been con- 

 veyed at night to the Black dam and sunk in its mossy bottom, 

 no one ever knew. The making of whisky without due attention 

 to the formalities prescribed by Parliament is not unknown at the 

 present day in the vicinity of Stirling. Only two years ago a 

 respectable farmer with great skill constructed a still under the 

 floor of his barn, and led the flue into the chimney of the steading 

 steam-engine. For long he converted the cheapest feeding sugar 

 into fiery spirit ; but in an evil hour, prompted by greed, he sent 

 the town bellman round to advertise his wares. After a short 



