the door.

It was not, strictly speaking, as a professed depredator that Rob Roy now
conducted his operations, but as a sort of contractor for the police; in
Scottish phrase, a lifter of black-mail. The nature of this contract has
been described in the Novel of Waverley, and in the notes on that work.
Mr. Grahame of Gartmore's description of the character may be here
transcribed:--

"The confusion and disorders of the country were so great, and the
Government go absolutely neglected it, that the sober people were obliged
to purchase some security to their effects by shameful and ignominious
contracts of _black-mail._ A person who had the greatest correspondence
with the thieves was agreed with to preserve the lands contracted for
from thefts, for certain sums to be paid yearly. Upon this fund he
employed one half of the thieves to recover stolen cattle, and the other
half of them to steal, in order to make this agreement and black-mail
contract necessary. The estates of those gentlemen who refused to
contract, or give countenance to that pernicious practice, are plundered
by the thieving part of the watch, in order to force them to purchase
their protection. Their leader calls himself the _Captain_ of the
_Watch,_ and his banditti go by that name. And as this gives them a kind
of authority to traverse the country, so it makes them capable of doing
any mischief. These corps through the Highlands make altogether a very
considerable body of men, inured from their infancy to the greatest
fatigues, and very capable, to act in a military way when occasion
offers.

"People who are ignorant and enthusiastic, who are in absolute dependence
upon their chief or landlord, who are directed in their consciences by