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Reinforcements were on the way up, and the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry battalion of the Royal Highlanders were prepared to make a flank attack from their outpost line three-quarters of a mile south-east of Foka to relieve the Devons, but this would have endangered the safety of the outpost line without reducing the fire from the heights, and as the Fife and Forfar men would have had to cross two deep wadis under enfilade fire on their way to Foka their adventure would have been a perilous one.

But ain o' Livingstone's lads wha deserted at the same time, and has naethin' wrong wi' him except that he belongs to Forfar and has a perpetual drouth, tells me that our twa friends were juist in and oot, no mair than a week wi' the dragoons. My idea is that they went wi' Livingstone to get to us. And what for aye, what for?"

Each guest was obliged to empty this at his departure. If the guest's name was Scott, the necessity was doubly imperative. When the landlord of an inn presented his guests with deoch an doruis, that is, the drink at the door, or the stirrup-cup, the draught was not charged in the reckoning. On this point a learned bailie of the town of Forfar pronounced a very sound judgment.

Each guest was obliged to empty this at his departure. If the guest's name was Scott, the necessity was doubly imperative. When the landlord of an inn presented his guests with deoch an doruis, that is, the drink at the door, or the stirrup-cup, the draught was not charged in the reckoning. On this point a learned bailie of the town of Forfar pronounced a very sound judgment.

"It has been done by no men-at-arms, my liege," the messenger said; "but as Forfar was taken by Phillip the Forester and his mates, so has Linlithgow been captured by a farmer and his comrades, one William Bunnock." It was indeed true.

Soon these came in of every sort and shape, and in a week's time the Regiment was concentrated at Blairgowrie. The headquarters of the Regiment was at Kirkcaldy, the four Squadrons A, B, C, and D having their headquarters respectively at Cupar, Dunfermline, Dundee, and Forfar.

Just then a gleam of moonlight struggled through the wrack of clouds, and revealed the dark cliffs of the Forfar coast, towering high above them. The vessel had struck on the rocks at the entrance to one of those rugged bays with which that coast is everywhere indented.

The original surname of the family was De Balinhard, assumed from an estate of that name in the county of Forfar.

To the men on the rock itself the aspect of the spot was sufficiently striking and peculiar, but to those who viewed it from a boat at a short distance off it was singularly interesting, for the whole scene of operations appeared like a small black spot, scarcely above the level of the waves, on which a crowd of living creatures were moving about with great and incessant activity, while all around and beyond lay the mighty sea, sleeping in the grand tranquillity of a calm summer day, with nothing to bound it but the blue sky, save to the northward, where the distant cliffs of Forfar rested like a faint cloud on the horizon.

At one time they had little opposition in the spring trade, and old St John's Wells' advice to the members of the firm, when they went to Forfar and Fife, was to "bid little and lie far back." The Williamsons generally brought down from Fifeshire on their spring visits a lot of the best Fife cows, and no doubt their blood are in many of the Aberdeen cattle to this day.