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Lads from all Galloway were there, shock-headed Vikings, with far-looking blue eyes, from Kirkmaiden to Leswalt, black, hook-nosed Blairs and McCallums from Garlieston sat beside Rerrick and Colvend men with deep-set eyes, the fine flower of the Free Trade, men whose forefathers had run cargoes for a hundred and thirty years into the same ports, and refused King's service for many thousand, though perfectly obedient to their own lords and war committees.
The spy had become a clean man again, and the same would be known from among all the folk from Nith Brig to the heuchs of the Back Shore of Leswalt. His kin would own him openly. Stonykirk parish was again free to him.
No one will molest our cousin in her heritages now! We five have stood about her while there was need. But for the present Sir Sholto and his men can keep count and reckoning with any from the back-shore of Leswalt to Berwick bound." "Aye, indeed," cried James Douglas, "we will go till the time come when the suitors gather, like corbies about a dead lamb!"
"How could she be lost in this country of Galloway?" he said, "a land where there are naught but Douglases and men bound body and soul to the Douglas, from Solway even to the Back Shore o' Leswalt? 'Tis just no possible I'll wager that it is that Hieland gipsy Mistress Lindesay that has some love ploy on hand, and has gane aff and aiblins ta'en the lass wi' her for company."
Over the wild uplands which lie between Leswalt and Stranryan, the Back Shore men arrived not a man missing. They were the nearest and their horses were quite unbreathed. Stonykirk and Kirkmaiden came next, and then the lads from the moors with hair bushy about the fetlocks of their steeds. They were a broad-shouldered and go-as-you-please crowd.
For not only had they been expected at the Portsmouth summer station by numerous pretty ladies, but the navigation between Barnhourie and the Back Shore of Leswalt was as full of danger as it was entirely without glory. If they were unlucky, they might be cashiered for losing the ship. If lucky, the revenue men would claim the captured cargo.
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