The men repaired her ladyship's cracked china, and assisted the Laird in his sporting parties, wormed his dogs, and cut the ears of his terrier puppies.

The children gathered nuts in the woods, and cranberries in the moss, and mushrooms on the pastures, for tribute to the Place.

These acts of voluntary service, and acknowledgments of dependence, were rewarded by protection on some occasions, connivance on others, and broken victuals, ale, and brandy when circumstances called for a display of generosity; and this mutual intercourse of good offices, which had been carried on for at least two centuries, rendered the inhabitants of Derncleugh a kind of privileged retainers upon the estate of Ellangowan.

'The knaves' were the Laird's 'exceeding good friends'; and he would have deemed himself very ill used if his countenance could not now and then have borne them out against the law of the country and the local magistrate.

But this friendly union was soon to be dissolved.
The community of Derncleugh, who cared for no rogues but their own, were wholly without alarm at the severity of the Justice's proceedings towards other itinerants.