erence with the lord
advocate, got permission to augment his force by another company, and
leave to draw two days' pay a-week for account of the men, and to defray
the necessary expenses of the corps. The doing of this bred no little
agitation in the same; and some of the forward and upsetting spirits of
the younger privates, that had been smitten, though not in a disloyal
sense, with the insubordinate spirit of the age, clamoured about the
rights of the original bargain with them, insisting that the officers had
no privilege to sell their independence, and a deal of trash of that
sort, and finally withdrew from the corps, drawing, to the consternation
of the officers, the pay that had been taken in their names; and which
the officers could not refuse, although it was really wanted for the
contingencies of the service, as Major Pipe himself told me.

When the corps had thus been rid of these turbulent spirits, the men grew
more manageable and rational, assenting by little and little to all the
proposals of the officers, until there was a true military dominion of
discipline gained over them; and a joint contract was entered into
between Major Pipe and me, for a regular supply of all necessaries, in
order to insure a uniform appearance, which, it is well known, is
essential to a right discipline. In the end, when the eyes of men in
civil stations had got accustomed to military show and parade, it was
determined to change the colour of the cloth from blue to red, the former
having at first been preferred, and worn for some time; in the
accomplishment of which change I had (and why should I disguise the
honest fact?) my share of the advantage which the kingdom at large drew,
in that period of anarchy and confusion, from the laudable establishment
of a volunteer force.

CHAPTER XXI--THE PRESSGANG

During the same just and necessary war for all that was dear to us, in
which the volunteers were raised, one of the severest trials happened to
me that ever any magistrate was subjected to. I had, at the time, again
subsided into an ordinary counsellor; but it so fell out that, by reason
of Mr Shuttlethrift, who was then provost, having occasion and need to go
into Glasgow upon some affairs of his own private concerns, he being
interested in the Kilbeacon cotton-mill; and Mr Dalrye, the bailie, who
should have acted for him, being likewise from home, anent a plea he had
with a neighbour concerning the bounds of their