The miller of Keir was brought forward as a witness, and swore positively that the laird was _not_ present.

Now, as it was well known that he was there, and that the miller knew it, a neighbour asked him privately, when he came out of the witness-box, how he could on oath assert such a falsehood.

The miller replied, quite undaunted, and with a feeling of confidence in the righteousness of his cause approaching the sublime--"I would rather trust my soul in God's mercy than Keir's head into their hands." A correspondent has sent me an account of a curious ebullition of Jacobite feeling and enthusiasm, now I suppose quite extinct.

My correspondent received it himself from Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, and he had entered it in a commonplace-book when he heard it, in 1826.
"David Tulloch, tenant in Drumbenan, under the second and third Dukes of Gordon, had been '_out_' in the '45--or the _fufteen, or both_--and was a great favourite of his respective landlords.

One day, having attended the young Lady Susan Gordon (afterwards Duchess of Manchester) to the 'Chapel' at Huntly, David, perceiving that her ladyship had neither hassock nor carpet to protect her garments from the earthen floor, respectfully spread his plaid for the young lady to kneel upon, and the service proceeded; but when the prayer for the King and Royal Family was commenced, David, _sans ceremonie_, drew, or rather 'twitched,' the plaid from under the knees of the astonished young lady, exclaiming, _not_ sotto voce, 'The deil a ane shall pray for _them_ on _my_ plaid!'" I have a still more pungent demonstration against praying for the king, which a friend in Aberdeen assures me he received from the son of the gentleman who _heard_ the protest.