"You have insisted?" repeated Rob.
"The affair is in the hand of my chamberlain," aaid the duke, evasively. "I am not now to learn the tricks of Highland drovers, and how your band of landless reivers and broken sorners, who drove those cattle south, are likely to serve me." The Duke made this offensive speech for the express purpose of working himself, and Rob too, into a passion.
"Montrose," said the latter, sternly; "those whom you stigmatize as landless reivers and broken sorners are better men than ever inherited your blood, duke now though you be! And if this is the way you mean to treat me, by the Grey Stone in Glenfruin, and by the souls of those who died there, I shall not consider itmyinterest to pay your interest, nor my interest either to pay even the principal!"
"Dare you say this to me?" exclaimed the duke, flushing with real anger; "to me, under my own roof-tree?"
MacGregor laughed, and patted the basket-hilt of his sword, put on his bonnet, and arose. Saying, "I would say something more if you stood on the open heather, under the canopy of heaven. But now let us understand each other; big words never scared MacGregor, and they are not likely to do so now. I have but £200 to offer you, and yours it should have been had you acted justly or generously; but now——"
"You will keep it, of course?"
"Ay, every God's-penny, and lay it out in the king's service."
"What king?"
"Canyouask?" exclaimed Rob, with a glance of surprise, that was blended almost with ferocity. "I mean King James VIII. of Scotland. Queen Anne is ill, so men told me in the south; the day is not far distant when the flag will hang half-hoisted on the walls of Carlisle; and the first news that the Hanoverian Elector has landed in England will make the Highland hills bristle with broadswords—yea, bristle like a stubble-field! The heather will be on fire from Strathspey to Inverary, and this £200, Montrose, the sum exactly for which, as men say, you sold your country, when bribed to make the Union, I shall lay out in the service of him who has sworn to break it. Ochon! the ills that are coming upon us are a pregnant example of the folly of a people allowing their fatherland to be the property of kings! Thus, ours succeeded to the kingdom of England, just as they might have done to a farm or a barony; but England being the richer and the greater, they soon forgot the old house in which their good forefathers lived and died. And now, Montrose, learn from this hour that MacGregor is your enemy!"
The duke, who was too high-spirited to brook being bearded in his own house, raised his hand to the bell to summon his servants, but paused on seeing the stern frown that gathered on MacGregor's face, and that his right hand was on the pistol in his girdle.
With a mock reverence Rob left his presence, reached the barbican, mounted his horse, and was soon galloping down Strathblane towards the banks of the Enrich.
The duke's first intention was to have him overtaken by a mounted party and made prisoner; but he speedily dismissed the idea, for to waylay one who had just left his own threshold would cover his name with disgrace and reprobation throughout the north; and, moreover, the castle of Mugdock was uncomfortably near the Highland frontier.
"No, no," he muttered; "'twere better that he should fall into other hands than mine, and find his way from thence to the castle of Dumbarton, or thekindlygallows of Crieff," for so the Highlanders ironically termed that formidable gibbet on which so many a sturdy cateran has taken his last farewell of the sun.
Full of his own thoughts, which were fiery and bitter, and feeling fully resolved to challenge Montrose to a combat, according to the laws of honour and of arms, Rob rode fast along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond: but darkness had set in before he drew near Inversnaid.
Then his heart began to swell with other and kindlier emotions as he pictured his home and his household—his wife and their fairhaired children welcoming him back; and already their voices seemed to sound in his ears, and their smiling faces to come before him.
The moon had risen, and shed its light upon that lovely lake of many isles, on the vast shadowy masses of Ben Lomond and its wondrous scenery, through which the rugged pathway wound, overhung in some places by gloomy pines, by impending rocks, or the feathery sprays of the silver birch.
With scorn and defiance of Montrose, certain emotions of pride and security swelled the heart of MacGregor, as he rode on; for again he was at home—in the home of the swordsman and shepherd—the abode of the wolf and the eagle, where yet, in the garb of old Gaul—
The hunter of deer and the warrior trod,To his hills that encircle the sea.
From some points Loch Lomond resembled a great river, lying between lofty mountains, its bosom dotted with isles that are covered with trees, dark brushwood, or moss of emerald green. Bold headlands of rock seemed to jut forth in the water, which shone in the moonlight like a sheet of silver, and hills that were covered with wood filled up the background.
And there, in the moonlight, lay the loveliest of all Loch Lomond's green and woody isles, the MacGregors' burying-place—the Place of Sleep, Inchcailloch, or the Isle of Nuns, with its ruined chapel and all its solemn trees.
The Red MacGregor gazed on it wistfully, for there had all the dead of his persecuted clan been gathered, generation after generation, ever since the days of Donngheal, the son of King Alpin; and now he whipped his lagging horse, and ere long reached the narrow track which led to his home at Inversnaid.
The stillness began to surprise him—no cattle lowed on the hills, no dog barked or bayed to the moon as she waded through the fleecy clouds, and one or two cottages, whose inmates he knew, seemed to have fallen in or been levelled.
A strange foreboding of evil stole into his breast.
At last his own house, with its whitewashed walls and its roof thatched with heather, rose before him in the glen; but no smoke curled from its chimneys—no light appeared in any of its windows, and all was solemnly and oppressively still in the homestead around it—still and silent as the islet of the dead that lay in the shining lake below.
Dismounting, he led his horse by the bridle, and was about to approach the door, when three Highlanders appeared suddenly before him: one carried a gun, and was fully armed; the other two bore a dead deer, which was slung by the feet from the branch of a tree that rested on their shoulders.
He with the gun came boldly forward, and demanded "who went there?"
"The Red MacGregor," replied Rob, in Gaelic.
"Inversnaid!" exclaimed the three men, joyously; and, dropping the deer, they almost embraced him, for they proved to be Greumoch and two other MacGregors, who were among his most trusted and valued followers.
"What does all this mean?" he exclaimed; "why is my house shut, and where are the people?"
"Ask Montrose!" said Greumoch, fiercely.
"Montrose! I left him but a few hours ago in Strathblane," replied Rob.
"And he told you nothing?"
"Only that I owed him money, and that this money he would have—every penny. But speak quickly—Helen, the boys—what has happened?"
The resentment of Rob Roy was deep, fierce, and bitter when he found that his house and homestead had been swept of everything, and that nothing remained for him and his family but an abode in the woods or on the mountain side; and he uttered a terrible vow for vengeance on Killearn and on the duke his master.
Ponderous locks now secured the door of his own house against him. These Greumoch's gun might soon have blown to pieces, and thus he might have forced an entrance; or he might have repaired to the house of his nephew at Glengyle. But Rob did neither; he simply desired Greumoch to conduct him to Helen, who now had found shelter in a little cottage—a veritable hut—in a glen at some distance; and the first boding sound that reached his ear as he approached it was the melancholy wail of the bagpipe, as Alpine, the family piper, played Helen'sLament, which we believe has never been committed to paper, but has been handed down from one generation to another.
The presence of his wife and children (one of the latter sick and ailing, too), instead of soothing Rob Roy, added fuel to the flame that burned within him; and the alternate grief and energy of Helen spurred his longing for vengeance on those who had so foully wronged him.
Next, his followers crowded around him, detailing their losses and insults, grasping significantly the hilts of their swords and dirks, and gradually lashing each other into greater fury, for hitherto they had lacked but a leader, and now that Rob had returned they expected him to march them at once against the Grahams, or whoever might come in their way. But Rob Roy had greater aims in view than the mere gratification of private revenge; so he resolved to be patient for a time.
"And when that time comes, Helen," said he, with solemn energy, "I will lay the Lennox in flames, and harry Mugdock to its groundstone. There is not a house or homestead, a castle or village, but I shall lay in ashes, between this and the Trongate of Glasgow, unless my hopes and measures fail me."
Helen answered only by her tears, and pressed her sick baby closer to her breast.
"Woe to you, Killearn," said Greumoch, while feeling the edge of his poleaxe; "if you fall into my hands you shall have a short life!"
Next morning Rob placed Helen on a strong Highland garron, and slung the children in two panniers on the back of the horse he had ridden from Glasgow. Greumoch, MacAleister, and others shouldered their long Spanish muskets, the pipers struck up "MacGregors' March," and in this fashion the family of Inversnaid departed to seek a wilder part of the country, where, rent free, they might dwell amid the hills.
Rob retired twelve Scottish (or twenty English) miles further into the Highlands, but he still remained upon what he considered his own territory; and there, building what was termed a creel-house, resolved to live in open war with, and defiance of, the Duke of Montrose, who, by a regular form of law, had now become, for a time, legal proprietor of Inversnaid and Craigrostan!
In the wilds of Glendochart Rob began to frame daring political schemes, which the protection afforded to him by his kinsman, Sir John Campbell, of Glenorchy, now Earl of Breadalbane, enabled him to mature, and arms were collected and hidden in secret places, and men were prepared for the coming strife.
Aware that the Paper Court of Dunedin (as the Highlanders disdainfully term the College of Justice at Edinburgh) was not a place where a Celt—especially a MacGregor—was likely to obtain equity, when opposed to a powerful duke who supported the Whigs, whose government Rob abhorred—he resolved to set all law at defiance, and, like a true Scot of the olden time, to confide in his sword alone.
In addition to the seizure of all he possessed on earth, the advertisements which appeared, again and again, in the columns of the "Edinburgh Evening Courant," stung him to the soul; for therein he was stigmatized as a fraudulent bankrupt, an outlaw, and robber—as if it was sought to make him one, for the express purpose of destroying him. One runs as follows:—
"All magistrates and officers of his Majesty's forces are entreated to seize upon Rob Roy, and the money which he carries with him, until the persons concerned in the money may be heard against him; and that notice be given, when he is apprehended, to the keepers of the Exchange Coffee-house at Edinburgh, and the keeper of the Coffee-house at Glasgow, where the parties concerned will be advertised, and the seizers shall be very reasonably rewarded for their pains." (Edinburgh Courant, No. 1,058.)
"Now, Helen," said he, trampling the paper under foot, and then casting it into the bogwood fire that blazed on the floor of their cabin, "by the soul o' Ciar Mhor, our foes shall find that the days of Glenfruin are come again! Henceforward, all is at end between us and the Lowlanders, and we shall devote ourselves to war and death!"
When Craigrostan, the last of his patrimony, was taken from him, MacGregor was so exasperated (to quote Browne's "Highland History") "that he declared perpetual war against the duke, and resolved that in future he should supply himself with cattle from his grace's estates, a resolution which he literally kept, and for THIRTY years he carried off the duke's flocks with impunity, and disposed of them publicly in different parts of the country."
The historian adds that these cattle generally belonged to the duke's tenants, who were thus impoverished and unable to pay their rents. He so levied, at the point of the sword, contributions in meal and money, but never until it had first been delivered by the poor tenants to the duke's storekeeper, to whom he always delivered a receipt for the quantity he carried off. At settling the money rents, he frequently attended with a strong band of chosen men, and giving receipts in due form, pocketed the rents of Montrose, who soon began to repent, in bitterness, that he had ever molested Rob Roy.
The hills abounded with red deer, the moors and forests with other game—the lochs and rivers teemed with fish—the pastures of the Grahames were full of cattle; thus, Rob and his outlawed followers lived sumptuously in their mountain fastnesses, whither none, as yet, dared to follow them.
Montrose and Killearn were, at that time, beyond Rob's reach; so on Archibald Stirling, of Carden, who had long withheld his tribute of black-mail for service and protection rendered, fell the first burst of his indignation.
It was on a day in the harvest of 1710, that he marched about two hundred and fifty men, in hostile array, with pipes playing, through the parish of Kippen, after passing through the wild glens that lie at the feet of Benmore and Benledi.
This force suddenly appeared before the castle of Carden, which stood on an eminence or island, formed by what was then a loch, but the bed of which is now a rich green meadow, and its name signifies "Caer-dun," or, the fort on the height. No vestige of this castle remains now; though so lately as 1760 a portion of the great tower was standing.
Archibald Stirling was a high cavalier, who, two years before, had been indicted for treason, for having drunk the health of James VIII. at the cross of Dunkeld, accompanied by the Stirlings of Keir and Kippendavie, while swords were flourished, trumpets sounded, and muskets fired.
On the occasion of Rob's visit, Stirling and his lady were both from home, with many of their servants. No inroad was expected from any quarter, and, as the drawbridge was down, the MacGregors, who had been prepared to take the place by storm, quietly took possession of the gates, spread themselves over the whole house, and the contents of the cellars and pantries were quickly investigated.
When the family returned, about sunset, they found the gates shut, the bridge drawn up, and the windows and bartizan full of grim-looking MacGregors, in their red tartans, and bristling with swords, axes, and long guns; while Rob's favourite piper, Alpine, strode to and fro on the roof, playing his invariable air of defiance, "The Battle of Glenfruin."
Outwitted and alarmed, the laird tied a white handkerchief to the point of his sword, and dismounting from the saddle, behind which his terrified lady rode upon a pillion, he advanced to the outer edge of the moat, and waved thrice his impromptu flag of truce. On this the pibroch ceased, and Rob Roy, with bonnet and feather, broadsword and target, appeared at a window of the hall.
"What is the meaning of all this, MacGregor?" asked the laird, sternly; "wherefore do I find your people here, and my own gates shut against me?"
"Carden, remember the black-mail!" replied the outlaw, with equal sternness. "You have long withheld the reward of that protection I once afforded you; and you must yield it now, or see your house burned to the groundstone."
"I will not yield you a shilling—nay, not a farthing of it. I am able to protect myself against all reivers and thieves whatsoever."
"Our beingin, and your beingout, at present, cannot look very like it," said MacGregor, laughing; "and here shall we stay, Carden——"
"Till I rouse the Lennox on you, or get a party of troops from Dumbarton. Remember that MacDougal's dragoons are lying at Kylsyth!" exclaimed Carden, furiously, as he turned towards his horse.
"Hold!" cried Rob, sternly, and the appearance of MacAleister's gun, levelled from the tower-head, made Carden pause; then a scream burst from his wife, when perceiving that Rob held from the window their youngest child, which he had taken from the cradle, as she feared with some cruel intention—perhaps to cast it into the lake! Her husband had the same dread, for he grew deadly pale.
"MacGregor, hold!" he exclaimed; "hold, for Heaven's sake, and spare my child!"
"Who spared mine, when you and Killearn came like wolves in my absence, and made my household desolate? Though my youngest-born was sick and ailing, you stood coldly by, while it and its mother were driven forth, from my house at Inversnaid, like the dam and cubs of a wolf; so if I am the wretch that you and others seek to make me, wherefore should I not dash this youngling at your feet, or cast it into the loch?"
For a moment both father and mother were speechless with terror and anxiety; but Rob was too humane to torment them thus. He laughed, kissed and toyed with the poor child, whose plump fingers played with his rough, red beard, and then he resigned it to the nurse, who was well-nigh scared out of her senses.
"MacGregor," cried the Laird of Carden, "unbar the gate, and lower the bridge, and you shall have your black-mail, every penny, with all arrears."
"'Tis well, Carden; now you speak like a reasonable man, and shall be alike welcome to your own rooftree, and to share with me a glass of wine from your own cellar. Admit the laird, Greumoch," he added to that personage, who had charge of the bridge and gate. He then hurried down, and after courteously assisting the lady to alight from her pillion, he conducted her into the castle, where he soon received the tax, granted a receipt for it in legal form, and drawing off his men, marched under cloud of night, and with all speed, towards the mountains.
Since the battle of Glenfruin, and its subsequent severities, the MacGregors had been a scattered clan; but they now began to flock to Rob Roy in such numbers that he soon found himself at the head of five hundred swordsmen.
As the representative of Glengyle, his influence over them was very great, and they all regarded him as the man ordained by Heaven to avenge their injuries on the Lowlanders; for a wrong done to one member of a clan was a wrong done to all, as they were all kinsmen, and related by blood.
Habituated to war and the use of arms, to a love of each other and of their chief, a clan was endued with what an historian terms the two most active principles of human nature—attachment to one's friends and hatred of their enemies.
"Thus," says Sir John Dalrymple, "the humblest of a clan, knowing himself to be as well born as the head of it, revered in his chief his own honour; loved in his clan his own blood; complained not of the difference of station into which fortune had thrown him, and respected himself. The chief in return bestowed a protection founded equally on gratitude and the consciousness of his own interest. Hence the Highlanders, whom more savage nations called savage, carried in the outward expression of their manners the politeness of courts without their vices, and in their bosoms the highest point of honour without its follies."*
* "Memoirs of Great Britain."
Notwithstanding the reward offered for his apprehension, Rob Roy was often rash enough to venture from his fastness alone, and into the very territories of his enemies, for he had become openly an adherent of the exiled House of Stuart, and deep schemes were on foot for maturing the plans of an insurrection; and the conduct of many of these intrigues was committed to his care.
On one of these missions he found himself belated one night near the village of Arnpryor, in the district of Kippen, to which he had paid more than one hostile visit, and where, consequently, he was exposed to many dangers.
Nevertheless, he repaired to the village alehouse, and found a gentleman named Henry Cunninghame, the Laird of Boquhan, seated by the fire over a bottle of claret, which cost only tenpence per mutchkin, and was then a favourite beverage with all ranks in Scotland. He at once recognized MacGregor, and they entered into conversation; but some remarks which he made, either on the affairs of the exiled king, or those of MacGregor, exasperated the latter, who sprang up with a hand on his sword, in token of defiance and quarrel. Boquhan was unarmed. MacGregor could have supplied him with pistols; but being the challenged party he preferred the sword, in the use of which few in Scotland equalled and none excelled him.
The goodwife of the tavern, fearing a brawl, averred that she had not a single weapon in her house; so the laird despatched a messenger to his residence for a sword, which his wife refused to send him, knowing well it was required for a duel or a brawl; so daylight broke, and found them still loth to part in anger, and still waiting for a weapon.
It chanced then that Boquhan espied an old and rusty rapier in a corner, which had hitherto escaped his notice. He at once possessed himself of it; Rob unsheathed his claymore; the tables and chairs were thrust aside, and the combat began with great fury.
It is stated that MacGregor soon discovered that he had no ordinary antagonist in Henry Cunninghame; and having no particular animosity to him, and remembering, perhaps, how perilous to his own clan his death, or even a severe wound, would prove at that particular crisis, after a dozen passes or so, he lowered the point of his sword, and said,—
"Enough of this, Boquhan; I find you are brave as you are expert, and I yield to you." So he sheathed his sword, and they parted good friends; but Rob's enemies in the Lennox magnified his prudence into a humiliating defeat.
Roy Roy and those who adhered to him found themselves tolerably safe in the land of the Campbells—the more so as his mother was a daughter of that powerful clan which had been at enmity with the house of Montrose since the wars of the Covenant, since the slaughter of the Campbells at Inverlochy by the Great Marquis, and since the invasion of Lorn by his cavaliers. Fortunately for Rob Roy, the mutual hate between the Dukes of Argyll and Montrose was still as hot as ever.
The death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I. soon brought political matters to a crisis in Scotland, where the Jacobites had remained quiet enough under the rule of a sovereign who was a Stuart, and under none else could the union of the two kingdoms ever have been achieved.
But now, a rising for her brother to succeed as James VIII. of Scotland and III. of England was resolved on, and a great meeting of Jacobite leaders took place in Breadalbane. The better to mask their intentions from Government, it was entitled a hunting match, though among the secluded hills of the Scottish Highlands such a precaution seemed somewhat unnecessary.
The chiefs and chieftains—among the latter was Rob Roy—who assembled on the occasion, soon ascertained each other's sentiments and the number of men they could bring into the field; and ulterior plans were soon resolved upon, while a previously prepared bond, for their mutual faith to each other and to the exiled king, was produced, and thereunto each man appended his signature.
By some inexcusable neglect on the part of a gentleman who became its custodian, this important paper fell into the hands of Captain Campbell of Glenlyon (an officer whose name was unfortunately involved deeply in the Massacre of Glencoe), who was then stationed in the garrison of Fort William, near Lochiel.
Glenlyon retained the bond, and finding that among the names appended thereto were those of many who were his own immediate friends and relations, he did not, for a time, mention its tenor or even its existence; but the horror with which he was regarded in Scotland, as the tool of King William in the midnight slaughter of the Macdonalds, had spread even among his own kinsmen; and thus, when the Jacobite chiefs became aware that a man of a character so unscrupulous held a document that might give all their heads to the block and their estates to fire and sword, they became naturally anxious and alarmed, and a hundred futile plans were formed for its recovery or destruction.
The Earl of Mar, the chief of the Jacobite leaders, turned to Rob Roy, who, although he had affixed his name to the bond as "Robert MacGregor of Inversnaid and Craigrostan," cared not a rush personally about the matter, as he despised alike the new king and his government; but on being urged by others, whose fortunes were less desperate, he resolved to undertake its recovery or perish in the attempt.
To this he was urged by Sir James Livingstone, who had been despatched to him by the Earl of Mar, and who was the same gentleman he had wounded after the devastation of Kippen.
Disguising himself, he relinquished the picturesque garb of the mountains for a rocquelaure, boots, and breeches, and rode to Fort William, which is a strongly-built and regular fortress, situated near the base of Ben Nevis, and at the extremity of Lochiel.
Notwithstanding the peril in which he placed himself, for the advertisements of the "Courant" still, from time to time, offered a reward for him dead or alive, Rob contrived to pass the gates and sentinels unnoticed or unquestioned, and obtained an interview with Captain Campbell of Glenlyon, who recognized him immediately, but dared neither to discover nor detain him, as Rob was a near relation of his own.
His visitor inquired about the bond which had been signed at the pretended hunting-match, and, to his rage and indignation, he discovered, after long evasion, that Glenlyon, in revenge for the contemptuous manner in which he was spoken of by the Jacobites, had placed the document in the hands of the governor of the garrison!
The latter was Sir John Hill, a brave and resolute old Whig officer, who had been placed there so far back as the days of Charles II., and had retained his command during all the changes of the long and stormy period that intervened—in fact, strange as it may appear, he was one of the last soldiers of Oliver Cromwell.
"And so this bond, which binds so many of us in life and death to King James, is in possession of Colonel Hill?" said Rob, with visible uneasiness.
"Yes," replied Glenlyon, with a malignant expression in his light grey eyes; "and it shall be forwarded in due time to the Secretary of State for the information of His Majesty and the Privy Council."
"Humph—His Majesty!" repeated Rob, with, scorn in his eye and tone; "will it be sent soon?"
"Why doyouask, my friend?" inquired the captain.
"Because," replied Rob, with a smile, "as my name is appended to it, I should like, with your leave, kinsman, to get a little further into the hills, as I know that the Lords of the Privy Council take some interest in my movements."
"Kinsman Rob, situated as you and the MacGregors are, it will not make much difference now. But in three days the bond will be sent from this to the Governor of Dumbarton in charge of Captain Huske."
"Does he belong to Argyle's regiment?"
"No; the South British Fusiliers."
"He will require a pretty strong party to march with through the glens."
"He will have the usual escort," replied Glenlyon, carelessly; for he did not remark the red flash of triumph that sparkled in the eyes of Rob Roy, as he took his leave, and lost no time in travelling over the mountains, and reaching his now humble home.
Knowing that Captain Huske and his party must pass through the last-named valley, Rob summoned MacAleister, Greumoch, Alaster Roy, his oldest son Coll—who could now shoulder a musket, and was a strong and active boy—with fifty other MacGregors, all men on whom he could depend, who had been his comrades in every expedition of importance, and whom he knew would stand by him truly "to the last of their blood and their breath;" accompanied by these he took up a position in a place which commanded a view of the whole glen, and remained there night and day waiting for his prey.
The grey smoke of the clachan of Killin was visible in the distance from Rob's bivouac; and on the other hand lay Loch Dochart, amid whose lonely waters the scaup-duck, the water-rail, and the ring-ouzel float, and where the long-legged heron wades in search of the spotted trout.
Moated by these waters is an isle containing the ruins of a castle, the ancient residence of the knights of Lochawe. Masses of trees almost shroud it now; but once, in the days of its strength and pride, it was stormed by the MacGregors during a moonlight night, in a keen and frosty winter, when the loch was sheeted with ice. Constructing large fascines of timber to shield them from arrows and other missiles, they pushed those screens before them, and on reaching the outer wall, soon became masters of the place.
There, too, is a floating isle, formed by the intertwisting of roots and water-plants. Often it is seen to float like a ship before the wind, with the bewildered cattle which have ventured on it from the shore, for its grass is rich and verdant.
With tales of past achievements and songs, passing the whisky-bottle round the while, Rob and his followers saw the third day drawing to a close, before Alaster Roy, who had been scouting down the glen, came in haste to announce that a red English soldier was in sight! This proved to be the advanced file of Captain Huske's party.
The summits of the hills, behind which the sun was setting, were dark and sombre, while a ruddy purple hue tinged those on which his light was falling.
Concealing themselves among some tufts of high fern and dwarf alder-trees, the MacGregors watched the advance of those whom they deemed the chief tools of their tormentors—the unsuspecting soldiers of the line.
The brightly-burnished musket-barrels of the men, and the pikes then carried by the officer and his sergeant, were seen to flash and glitter as they advanced through the deep hollow, along which the narrow foot-track wound; and soon the bright red of their square-skirted coats, and their white crossbelts, breeches, and gaiters appeared in strong relief upon the dun heather of the glen.
Rob counted that there was an officer, a sergeant, and twenty rank and file. From his ambush he could with ease have shot down the whole party, had he been cruelly disposed; but, that even his enemies might not be taken unprepared, he ordered young Coll, MacAleister, and the rest to keep out of sight, but to start up at a given signal; and then, rising from his hiding-place, he advanced alone towards the marching soldiers.
The appearance of a fully-armed Highlander, with sword, dirk, pistols, and target, excited no comment then; for, on Rob drawing near, the officer coldly returned his salute, and the sergeant inquired "how far it was from thence to the head of Loch Lomond?"
"About twenty miles, if you pass through Glenfalloch." The soldiers, who were a mixed party of the 15th Foot and the South British Fusiliers, muttered something which sounded very like oaths. In those days an officer's escort accompanied every Government letter or message through the Highlands, as smaller parties were liable to be cut off.
"It will be mirk midnight before you get half way through the glen," resumed Rob, with a mocking smile; "and people say that Glenfalloch is haunted."
"By what?" asked the officer, who wore a Ramillie wig, a three-cornered hat, and red rocquelaure.
"Spirits."
"Indeed—whisky, I suppose?" said the sergeant, laughing.
"Loud voices are heard talking in the air overhead, when nothing can be seen but the sailing clouds."
"Voices!" exclaimed Captain Huske.
"Yes, as if one hill-top was talking to the other."
"Bah! I can bid our drummer beat the 'Point of War.' I warrant he'll scare away all your Highland goblins, even Rob Roy himself, whom I wish was as near me as you are."
"You have had him near enough once before," said MacGregor, gravely, as he suddenly recognized the officer, though some time had elapsed since they last met.
"Hah—when?"
"In Moffatdale, where he gave you a lesson in humanity, and in good manners, too."
"Zounds, sirrah, what do you mean?" asked Captain Huske, cocking his hat fiercely over his right eye, and stepping forward a pace.
"Simply, that he ran you through the body, as he is quite prepared to do again, if you do not instantly yield up your packet of despatches!"
The officer sprang back, threw off his rocquelaure, and brought his pike to the charge; Rob parried the thrust by his claymore, but he uttered a shrill whistle on seeing the soldiers fixing their bayonets and cocking their muskets.
"Shoot down the Highland dog!" cried Captain Huske, choking with passion; but his soldiers paused, for a yell now pierced the welkin, and fifty MacGregors, armed with sword and target, and each with the badge of his forbidden clan in his bonnet—a sprig of the mountain pine—rushed down with a shout of "Ard choille! ard choille! 'Srioghal mo dhream!" Perceiving that he was outnumbered, the officer withdrew his pike, and by outstretched sword-arm Rob kept back his own people, who glared over their shields at the unfortunate party of soldiers, who thought their doom was sealed, and that a hopeless and bloody struggle was about to ensue.
"Are you all robbers?" asked the officer, fiercely.
"No more than your citizens of London or Carlisle may be," replied MacGregor. "You might be shot by a cowardly footpad on Hounslow Heath—ay, or London Bridge, or in the High Street of Edinburgh; but who there would stop a band of armed soldiers as I this day stop you? Here, in front of your men, sir, I will fight you, with sword and pistol, or with sword and dirk; whichever please you."
"Neither please me—I am a king's officer, and may not risk my life, like a roadside bully, thus," said the captain, haughtily. "Am I right in supposing that you are the outlaw Rob Roy, for whose capture a high reward is offered?"
"You are right; I am the Laird of Inversnaid, and instantly require your despatches."
"For what purpose?"
"The service of his Majesty, King James VIII., whom God preserve!" replied MacGregor, lifting his bonnet with reverence.
"I must either give up my life and the despatches together, or the despatches alone," said the officer, bewildered and exasperated.
"What you may do is nothing to me."
"But there is one of vast importance."
"The very one I wish, captain; so surrender it at once, or I shall cut you and your men into collops for the fox and the raven." Captain Huske opened the breast-pocket of his regimentals, and unwillingly gave to Rob a large sealed packet, addressed, "To the most noble Prince, James, Duke of Montrose, Secretary of State for Scotland. On His Majesty's Service."
Rob's eyes sparkled with resentment on seeing the name of his enemy; but he tore open the envelope, and taking out the well-known bond of the Highland chiefs, restored the packet to the English officer.
He then offered him and his men a dram each, and marched off into the darkening mountains, leaving the captain to proceed towards Dumbarton, or return to Colonel Hill at Fort William, whichever suited his orders or his fancy.
By this bold exploit Rob preserved secret the plans of the forthcoming insurrection, and saved from the scaffold, captivity, or exile, many brave nobles and gentlemen, whom otherwise the merciless Government of George I. would have seized and destroyed in detail.
Prior to the great Rising of the Clans in 1715, Rob Roy was engaged as usual in several small skirmishes and frays, in which his skill and strategy as a leader were prominent; and he gained yet more the reputation of being the protector of the poor against the rich, and of the defenceless against those who would oppress them.
In spite of the Duke of Montrose, he had re-established himself again at Craigrostan, from whence he never went abroad attended by less than twenty or thirty well-armed men, including his henchman and Greumoch.
These were hisLeine Chrios, or body-guard.
Some of the Grahames of Montrose, and others who were obnoxious to himself or to the cause of the exiled king, he confined occasionally in a place which is still named Rob Roy's prison.
This is a mural rock, the eyry of the osprey or water-eagle, which rises to the height of thirty feet on the north-eastern shore of Loch Lomond, about four miles from Kowardennan.
Slung by ropes, he occasionally lowered them from the summit, and after permitting them to swing in mid-air for a time, would give them a severe ducking in the loch below and compel them to shout—
"God save King James VIII."
They were then permitted to depart amid the laughter of his followers; and it must be borne in mind that this was very gentle treatment when compared with that to which the MacGregors were subjected when captured by the same people.
As the old Highland proprietors or heads of septs held their lands in virtue of an occupancy coeval with the first settlement of the tribes in Scotland, and consequently disdained to hold possession by virtue of a skeepskin rather than by their sword-blades, in later years, a system of suppressing the smaller lairds by force of arms had long been pursued with success by the house of Argyle in the west.
A powerful landowner of that name, who had recently been created a baronet, seized at the point of the sword a small estate in Glendochart, and expelled the proprietor with all his family and kindred.
MacGregor, who could not permit an act of such injustice to pass unpunished, sent Greumoch with forty men to the Braes of Glenorchy, with orders to "bring this oppressor of the poor a prisoner before him."
It was in the sweet season of spring, when the lapwing came to the bowers of silver birch and the green plover winged its way over the purple heather, when the MacGregors departed on this expedition; and being aware of the place and time when their prey would probably pass, they concealed themselves among the bleak granite rocks of Ben Cruachin, a vast mountain, the red furrowed sides of which—furrowed by a thousand water-courses—rise above Loch Awe, and terminate in a sharp cone.
Here stood the wall of a ruined chapel, founded of old by a MacGregor chief, and through it a well, deemed holy, flowed into a stone basin, under an old yew-tree. To the stem was chained an iron ladle, by which the thirsty pilgrim or wayfarer might drink, and at the bottom of the basin lay little copper Scottish coins which had been dropped therein as offerings, while knots of ribbons, rags, and trifles decorated the boughs of the aged yew.
"A place of good omen!" said Greumoch, looking around him; "for here it was that Clan Alpine won the lands of Glenorchy, when there were no paper courts in Dunedin, or redcoats in Dumbarton."
It chanced that on a day in summer, King David I., of Scotland, was hunting with Malcolm MacGregor, the eighth chief of Clan Alpine, on the side of Cruachin, when a wild boar, of marvellous strength, size, and ferocity, appeared in a rugged defile. It at once assailed the monarch, whose hunting-spear broke and left him at its mercy; but instead of rushing forward, the boar retired to whet its tusks against the rocks, so Malcolm craved the king's permission to attack it.
"E'en do," said the king; "but spaire nocht!"
"Eadhon dean agus na caomhain!" shouted MacGregor, translating the king's lowland Scottish into Gaelic, as he tore up a young tree by the roots, and kept the boar at bay until he could close with it and bury his long dagger in its throat. At the third stab he slew it.
To reward his courage, David granted him the lands of Glenorchy, and, in remembrance of the day, added to his armsargent, an oak-tree uprootedvert, across a claymoreazure, which every MacGregor may bear to this day.
But now the Campbells were lords of Glenorchy, and just as Greumoch had ended this legend of the clan, which no doubt all his hearers knew before, the great personage they were in search of rode into the defile, when he was surrounded, and his retainers were scattered in a moment.
On finding himself a prisoner, and knowing well to whom, the baronet proposed a ransom; but bribes were offered and threats uttered in vain to Greumoch, who ordered the prisoner to be tied up in a long plaid, which was slung over the shoulders of Alaster Roy and another tall gilly; and thus by turns, with two bearers at a time, he was conveyed for about fourteen miles to a place called Tyndrum, where he was brought before Rob Roy.
This village is at the head of Strathfillan in Breadalbane, on the western military road.
Rob upbraided the prisoner with his cruelty and oppression, and threatened to toss him over the rock into Loch Lomond, with a stone in his plaid, if he did not restore the lands in Glendochart to their original owner.
Paper was produced, a document was drawn up and signed, by the tenor of which he and his heirs renounced them formally and for ever.
He now hoped to be allowed to depart; but there arose a cry of,—
"To the well! to the well! give him a dip in the Holy Pool of St. Fillan!"
It was Paul Crubach who spoke.
"Be it so," said Rob; "if the water has not lost its virtue, a dip therein may improve the Campbell's spirit of honour, and prevent him from robbing the poor again."
In spite of his earnest entreaties, the MacGregors bore their prisoner, who feared they were about to drown him, to the well of St. Fillan. The whole population of the village followed, and lame Paul hobbled in front, chuckling and laughing, while his eyes flashed with insane delight, his long grizzled hair streaming in elf-locks on the wind, as with one hand he brandished his wooden cross, and with the other tolled vehemently the ancient bell of St. Fillan, which in those days always stood upon a gravestone in the churchyard.
After permitting his men to duck the prisoner soundly, Rob procured a horse, and sent him homeward with a safe escort under his son Coll; but though these indignities were too great to be forgotten, in followers Rob was too strong now to be captured, even by the Campbells of Argyle.
For the forthcoming revolt money was requisite, and Campbell of Aberuchail, taking advantage of Rob Roy's outlawry, had long withheld his tribute of black-mail, so, before returning to Craigrostan, our hero resolved on levying it, and marching from Tyndrum at the head of his followers, appeared before the mansion of Aberuchail, the proprietors of which had been baronets since 1627.
Having heard that the MacGregors had been seen in motion in the neighbourhood, all the cattle had been hastily collected in a dense herd within the outer walls of Aberuchail tower, around which there grew a fine wood of oak-trees that for ages had cast their shadows on the Ruchail, which means thered-stream.
A strong gate, loopholed for musketry, and surmounted by a coat of arms with the motto,Victoriam coronat Christus, was closed and secured as the MacGregors approached, and all was still within, save the lowing and bellowing of the cattle, so closely penned within the barbican.
Rob Roy thundered with his sword-hilt on the outer gate, in which an eyelet-hole was opened, and thereat the porter's face appeared, with an expression of anxiety and alarm, which was no way lessened when he found himself front to front with the keen eyes, the ruddy beard, and sunburned visage of the Red MacGregor, whom he knew instinctively.
"Is the laird at home?" asked the resolute visitor.
"Yes," stammered the gate-ward.
"Why does he not come in person when he knows who are here?" was the haughty query.
"He is at dinner."
"What! Is this Highland manners, to close your gates at meal-time, when other men open theirs wide, that all men may enter? Is this the way your master rewards those who protect him from thieving MacNabs and broken men of the Lennox?"
"Sir James Livingstone, Sir Humphrey of Luss, and several gentlemen are at dinner with him, and I dare not disturb them," urged the porter, whose orders were to keep out Rob at all hazards.
"Gentlemen!" repeated Rob. "Whigs, probably, plotting treason against King James. Tell your master that the Red MacGregor of Inversnaid is here, without, where it is not his wont to be kept, awaiting his arrears of black-mail, and that he shall see him, even if the King of Scotland and the Hanoverian Elector, too, were at table with him!"
After a time, the gate-ward returned, trembling, to say that "his master knew no such persons as either the King, the Elector, or the Laird of Inversnaid."
"By the grave of Cior Mhor, Aberuchail shall repent of this false whiggery!" exclaimed Rob, as he took a horn from his belt, and blew a blast so loud and shrill that the whole house and the woods around it rang with echoes.
Then anew the cattle bellowed, and the porter shut the eyelet-hole and fled, lest he might be pistolled.
Four pipers now struck up the "Battle of Glenfruin;" the MacGregors uttered a shout, and assailing the gate soon forced it; for theclach neart—the putting-stone of strength—which lay beside it, was dashed like a cannon-ball upon its planks by the most powerful of the band, till the barrier crumbled to pieces before them; after which they proceeded with drawn swords to goad and drive off the cattle.
On this, the baronet of Aberuchail came hastily to the door of the tower, and taking Rob Roy by the hand, made many apologies for what he alleged to be the stupidity of the porter, and led his unwelcome visitor into the house, where, however, neither Livingstone nor Luss appeared.
Then he handed him the "black-mail," for which MacGregor gave his receipt; they drank a bottle of claret together, and separated, to all appearance, good friends. The cattle were all left in the parks, and the MacGregors marched back to Craigrostan.
But does it not seem strange that when Pope was writing at Twickenham, when Addison and Steele were contributing to theSpectator, and when Betterton was acting at Old Drury Lane, this wild work was being done among the Highland hills?
In January, 1714, Rob commanded 500 men among the gathering of 2,000 Highlanders who, on the 28th of that month, fully armed on all points, attended the great funeral of Campbell of Lochnell. At their head were a pair of standards, belonging to the Earl of Breadalbane, preceded by thirteen pipers; for, in fact, this great Celtic funeral was in reality a Jacobite meeting—the dead body having been kept unburied for nearly a month, that an assemblage of Cavalier chiefs might take place, to consider and arrange during the march to the interment and the feast that followed it, the measures to be taken for a rising in favour of the Stuarts.
After maintaining, as already related, a vexatious predatory warfare against Montrose, who long since repented bitterly his injustice to the unfortunate Rob Roy, the MacGregors assembled in such numbers under the latter that they began to threaten the Western Lowlands, towards the lower end of Loch Lomond, from whence, marching into Monteith and the Lennox, they disarmed all whom their leader deemed inimical to the cause of James VIII.
To have complete command of the great sheet of water which lay before his rocky home, Rob seized every boat upon it, and had them drawn overland to Inversnaid, for the purpose of attacking or cutting off a strong body of West country Whigs, who were in arms for King George, and who were marching towards Loch Lomond; for so greatly were the operations of Rob dreaded that the people of Dumbarton supposed he might come upon them in the night to storm the castle and plunder the town.
Exasperated on finding that he had pounced on all their boats, the Whigs resolved to make a bold dash for their recovery.
The volunteers of Paisley, Renfrew, and Kilmarnock, were mustered and armed from the Royal arsenal in the castle of Dumbarton. A body of seamen from the ships of war then lying in the Clyde towed them up the river in long-boats and launches, and on entering Loch Lomond the whole force proceeded by land and water against Rob Roy and the MacGregors.
These forces acted under the orders of Lieutenant-General Lord Cadogan, colonel of the 4th Foot, who had arrived that year in Scotland. At night they halted at Luss, the stronghold of the Colquhouns, the hereditary foemen of Clan Alpine, where they were joined by Sir Humphry Colquhoun, chief of his name (and fifth in succession of him who fled from Glenfruin), with his son-in-law, James Grant of Pluscardine, who brought some forty or fifty men of his clan—"stately fellows," says Rae, in his history of the affair, "in their short hose and belted plaids (i.e.kilts), armed each with a well-fixed gun on his shoulder, a handsome target with a sharp-pointed steel about half an ell in length screwed into the navel of it, slung on his left arm, a sturdy claymore by his side, and a pistol or two with a dirk and knife in his belt."
The man-of-war boats, which were armed with brass swivel-guns, took all on board, and then they crossed the loch.
From the high land above Craigrostan MacGregor saw the advance of this force, which was too strong for him to contend against alone; and a stirring sight it must have been, on that beautiful sheet of water—the large boats, full of men in gay scarlet uniforms, their bright arms flashing in the sun; and it would seem, that thinking to scare the Highlanders, they beat incessantly on their drums, while the seamen maintained a constant discharge from their swivel-guns, the reports of which were multiplied among the steep mountains by a thousand echoes, as the whole expedition swept in shore towards Craigrostan.
Rob and his men, who were concealed among the rocks, the heather, and tall braken, high up on the mountain slope, could scarcely be restrained from rushing to the beach and making an attack when they saw the family banner of Sir Humphry, a saltire engrailed sable, crested with a red hart's head, and his followers in their tartan, which is blue striped with red; and each man wore the badge of his name, a tuft of bear-berry in his bonnet.
The union-jack that floated in the stern of each boat seemed but a foreign flag to MacGregor, for never had it waved on these waters before, and the red-coated volunteers he viewed simply as invaders and enemies; yet their strength was too great for him to hope a victory if he opposed them.
"Oich, oich!" muttered MacAleister, and others, as James Grant's boats, with his men in red tartans, appeared; "here come Pluscardine and his kail-eaters"—for being the people who first cultivated that vegetable in the north, they were named "the kail-eating Grants."
As the men began to leap ashore, with fixed bayonets, and form into companies, young Coll MacGregor could no longer restrain his ardour and impatience, and levelled his gun over the rocks, crying—
"A nis! a nis! a nis!" (now, now, now!) "E'en do and spaire nocht!"
"Hold, son of mine!" exclaimed his father, grasping his arm like a vice; "boy, would you destroy us all, and, it may be, with us King James's cause too? Let us await our time, and be assured it will come anon."
And so, seeing that a conflict would be useless, he prudently drew off his men to Strathfillan, where the Jacobite clans were forming a camp, prior to their joining the Earl of Mar; while the invaders of Craigrostan committed to the flames several thatched dwelling-houses, and the smoke of the conflagration, as it rolled along the mountain-slopes, added to the wrath and mortification of Rob and his men, as they retreated up the side of Loch Lomond.
While one party of volunteers pushed on the work of destruction, others searched for the missing boats, which they found far inland, at Inversnaid, and drew from thence to the water. Those which were useless they staved, or sunk, the rest were all conveyed to Dumbarton, where they were safely moored under the guns of the castle. And so ended the first expedition against Rob Roy, a history of which—as if it had been a campaign in a foreign land—was published soon after, in the form of a pamphlet.
Summonses were now issued by Government to all nobles and gentlemen, either in arms or who were suspected of being about to arm, including John, Earl of Mar, and fifty-two others, one of whom is designated as "Robert Roy,aliasMacGregor."
The brave Earl of Mar had now unfurled the standard of the exiled king at Braemar, as lieutenant-general of his forces, and after sending the "cross of fire" through the Highlands, in a few days he found himself at the head of ten thousand men, and half the peers of Scotland, with all those chiefs and gentlemen who had signed the Bond of Union, which Rob Roy had so luckily taken from Captain Huske, in Glendochart.
Mar's standard was of blue silk; it bore a thistle and the words NO UNION.
The Duke of Argyle, anxious to evince his attachment to the House of Hanover, hastened from London, to put himself at the head of his own clan, tenants, vassals, and all the troops then in Scotland—and a motley force they were, of English, Dutch, Switzers, and Lowland volunteers.
That branch of the Clan Alpine which is named the race of Dugald Ciar Mhor, was not commanded by Rob Roy at this momentous crisis, but by his young nephew, Gregor MacGregor, of Glengyle, who was lineal head of the house. Thus Rob served under him. Glengyle is best remembered in Scotland by his patronymic of Glun Dhu, or "Black-knee," from the remarkable spot, which his kilt rendered visible, on his left knee.
He was but a youth when the insurrection of 1715 took place, so there can be little doubt that, on most occasions, he would act under the eye and advice of a captain so skilful and bold as his uncle.
On the latter joining the insurgent camp in Braemar, he was at once despatched by the earl to Aberdeen, to raise in arms the descendants of 300 MacGregors, who had been forcibly conveyed there in 1624 by James Stewart, Earl of Murray, to fight in the feuds in which he became involved with the Grants, MacIntoshes, and others. In this mission Rob was pretty successful, for the popularity of his name, among his own clan and others made him an excellent recruiting officer at this crisis; and so little did he value the Whig Government and their proclamations that he walked openly about the streets of the Granite City, and on more than one occasion dined with Professor James Gregory, who was by descent a MacGregor, but had thus altered his name to elude the Act which proscribed it.
He joined the Earl of Mar in time to be present with his clan at the great battle of Sheriffmuir, where the insurgents met the king's forces led by the Duke o' Argyle, who was then lieutenant-general, knight of the garter, and commander-in-chief of the troops in Scotland.
It is no part of our plan to give any history of that indecisive battle, which was severe and bloody to both parties. Both armies wheeled upon their centres, and each routed the other's left wing, so that it is impossible to say with whom lay the victory.
On that day, Rob Roy, who commanded a body of MacGregors and MacPhersons, was accused of unwillingness to engage. His enemies went further, and asserted that, not wishing to offend his patrons the powerful Duke of Argyle and Earl of Breadalbane, save for whom he would have been crushed long ago by the Duke of Montrose, he remained almost aloof from the action. Lack of interest in King James's cause, or lack of courage could not be laid to his charge; yet on this great day the conduct of Rob Roy was incomprehensible.
Scott relates in his History, that when ordered to charge by one of Mar'saides-de-camp, he replied—
"If the earl cannot win the field without menow, he cannot win it with me."
From this it may be supposed that he considered the decisive moment past, and wished to spare his men; but, it is said, that on hearing this answer, a brave man of the Clan Vurich, named Alaster MacPherson, cast his plaid on the ground, drew his claymore, and called to the MacPhersons—
"Advance—advance!—followme!"
"Halt, Alaster," said Rob, interposing; "were this a question about a drove of sheep you might know something; but as the matter concerns the leading of armed men, you must allowmeto judge."
"Were the question about the foraying of a drove of Glen Eigas stots, the question with you, Rob, would not be who should be last, but who should befirst," was the stinging retort of MacPherson.
This nearly produced a quarrel between them; already their brows were knitted and their swords menaced each other, even while shells were bursting and shot of every kind were tearing up the turf about them; but finding the inexpedience of coming to blows when under the fire of an enemy, they gave each other a grim smile, and exchanged their snuff-mulls in token of amity, yet many of their men now joined the MacLeans, who at this moment made a tremendous charge upon the regulars.
The appearance of this clan in the field, numbering 800 swordsmen, is a memorable instance of the power of thepatriarchalsystem over thefeudal.
The chief had lived for years a banished loyalist in France, and their lands in Mull had been gifted to the House of Argyle; yet, in opposition to the latter, the whole fighting force of the clan were in the field against the duke, their legal landlord, and under their long-exiled chief, the venerable Sir John MacLean, fought valiantly.
With the best born, the best armed, and the bravest of the Clan Gillian in front, he led them on three ranks deep.
"Gentlemen," he exclaimed, "this is the day we have long wished for. Yonder stands Argyle for King George;herestands MacLean for King James! God bless him! Charge, gentlemen, charge!"
And with a wild yell, in which their pibroch mingled, the clan rushed on, and the levelled bayonets of the soldiers of the line went down before their whirling swords, like straw before the flames.
At that moment, through the smoke of the action there rushed an English officer towards the MacGregor's line. His sword was broken in his hand, and left him at the mercy of a gigantic Highlander, who pursued him with a tuagh, or Lochaber axe. He was bareheaded also, having lost his hat.
A stone caught the foot of this fugitive, who fell almost at the feet of Rob Roy. With a shout of triumph the fierce pursuer uplifted his axe, and was about to cleave the defenceless head of the Englishman, when the stroke was arrested by the interposed shield of MacGregor.
The man with the axe uttered a hoarse Gaelic oath, and turned furiously on the intercessor; but each drew back with an emotion of surprise that seemed quite mutual.
He was Duncan nan Creagh, the tall MacRae, from Kintail na Bogh, whom Rob believed he had killed on the hills of Glenorchy, and who, on finding himself now among the MacGregors, uttered a shout of "Righ Hamish gu bragh!" and rushed amid the smoke and carnage to rejoin the fierce MacRaes, who, sword in hand, with the caber-feidh, or banner of Seaforth, flying over them, flung themselves in headlong charge upon the Swiss battalion of Brigadier Grant, and hewed a long and terrible pathway through it.
Rob now lifted up the man he had saved, and to his astonishment found him to be Captain Huske, the same officer whom he had last met in Glendochart; so he sent him to the rear, a prisoner, in charge of his son Coll, from whom the captain was retaken a few minutes after by a detachment of Captain MacDougal's dragoons.
This confused battle of Sheriffmuir, or Slia Thirra, as the Celts name it, was claimed by both parties as a victory; but Mar found himself compelled to retire towards Perth, and to Rob Roy was assigned the onerous task of guiding his army through the deep and treacherous Fords of Frew, when they crossed the river Forth.
For a time after this battle Rob and his MacGregors garrisoned the fine old royal palace of Falkland, which lies at the foot of the Lomond hills, and the memory of that occupation still lingers in Fifeshire; for they "harried the pharisaical Whigs" to some purpose, laying the whole country under military contribution for miles around the palace, from which they retired at last with considerable booty, and after a sojourn of several weeks of jollity and ease.
Their shoes being much worn by marching, "they did not scruple to strip the feet of any civic and clerical functionaries with whom they chanced to meet, and whom they consoled with the jocular assurance that his gracious majesty James VIII. would be happy to afford them full compensation."
As the honour and advantage of the battle remained with Argyle, and as Mar's unpaid army began to disperse from want of food and subsistence, the insurrection soon came to an end, and the Government acted with a merciless barbarity upon the fallen. Their severity was worthy of the orientals alone, and in the hearts of the Highland youth a hatred was instilled that found a terrible vent in the future rising of 1745.
It was on the Lowland lords, however, that the hands of the Ministry fell most heavily; for, by retreating into their mountain fastnesses, the Highlanders defied as yet all efforts at coercion.
The following story is told of Duncan-nan-Creagh a short time after the battle of Sheriffmuir.
A tall and powerful Highlander, who had brought a drove of cattle into the south Lowlands, sought a night's shelter at the house of Captain MacDougal, who, as we have stated, commanded a troop of horse in that field.
The captain asked his Highland guest from what part of the north he came?
"Kintail na Bogh," replied the other, with some reserve.
"Know you a place called Corrie Choing?"
"I do, captain; but why do you ask?"
"I will tell you," replied the officer; "after the battle, accompanied by two of the best men of my troop, I overtook a strong and athletic Highlander, who by the blood on his tartans and the white rose in his bonnet, had evidently stood by King James on that unhappy day. As we came up at a canter he took off his plaid, folded it with great deliberation, placed it on the ground, and then he stood upon it to give him firmer footing. I was anxious to take this man prisoner, so we three rode round him in a circle, with our swords brandished; but one who unfortunately and unwisely ventured within reach of the clansman's sword, was cloven through his grenadier cap and slain. He slew the other, on which, sooth to say, I thought he had fairly earned his life and liberty, and so left him to his fate, simply asking him his name, and saying that he was a brave fellow. 'I am from Corrie Choing,' said he; 'but my name I may not tell you.'"
"I know him well, captain," said the drover; "we call him Duncan Mhor nan Creagh."
"The wars are over now, thank Heaven, and I wish him no harm," replied MacDougal, "for he is a brave and resolute fellow."
"I shall be sure to tell him so," said the drover, as he departed; but warily kept his own council, for he was no other than the identical Big Duncan of the Forays, from whom Rob Roy had saved Captain Huske during the battle of Sheriffmuir.