After the close of the whole insurrection, when the leaders of it were in their bloody graves or in hopeless exile, seeking in foreign camps and fields their bread at the point of the sword, the old rancorous sentiment against the Clan Alpine was still found to exist; for in the subsequent Act of Indemnity a free pardon was granted to all Jacobites, "excepting persons of the name of MacGregor, mentioned in an Act, made in Scotland in the first year of King Charles I., intituled 'Anent the Clan Gregor,' whatever name he or they may have, or doassume;" and hence especially among the proscribed appeared the now dreaded name of "Robert Campbell,aliasMacGregor,commonlycalled Robert Roy."
This insulting mode of designating him, as if he had been a common thief in the "Hue and Cry," embittered yet more the soul of MacGregor; though he had been so long outlawed, and subjected to every severity and danger, this new act made little difference circumstantially to Rob, and doubtless he despised it. But the erection of a government fortress and barrack onhis own landsof Inversnaid, for the direct purpose of overawing and subjugating his clan, and to lay him and it more completely at the mercy of the Whigs and Montrose, was more than he could suffer with patience.
His house of Auchinchisallan, in which he had resided in Breadalbane, had been wantonly burned, and his wife and children were once more driven to the caves and rocks for shelter; his cattle and crops were seized by a party of troops specially sent for those purposes by General Charles Lord Cadogan, an officer who had served as a brigadier under Marlborough, who had been taken prisoner at the siege of Messina, in 1706, and who was made Master-General of the Ordnance in 1722.
On MacGregor's lands he exercised great severity; and now, separated from his wife and children, the unfortunate Rob Roy, attended by his faithful henchman and foster-brother, Callam MacAleister, lurked in the mountains, and chiefly in the cavern near Loch Lomond, which still bears his name, and from whence he could see the flames of rapine and destruction, as the country was swept by fire and sword; and there he schemed out many a futile plan of vengeance on his oppressors.
Amid all this his heart bled for his children, who were growing up to desperate lives and wayward fortunes, the end of which he could not foresee. One thing, however, his own sense predicted: that the life of war and hazard he now lead could not last for ever, and that the erection of forts in the Highlands, and the entrance of war ships into the great salt lochs by which they were intersected, might ultimately curb the power of the Jacobite clans, especially when the overwhelming strength of the Campbells, the Grants, and other Whig clans, was united to that of the Lowland invader; and ultimately—but not in Rob's time—this prediction of his soul came true.
And yet it was for his children, and the patrimony which had been rent from them, that he maintained a hopeless struggle with their oppressors. It has been well observed by a modern writer, "that the motives to exertion furnished by the possession of children are as powerful as ever moved heart or hand. The secret of many a struggle in life's battle may be found at home. The man who has children dependent upon him will and must struggle manfully against the most adverse circumstances. The thought that the joy of their innocent young lives depends upon his courage, his perseverance, his energy—this thought will enable him to work wonders, and achieve what will appear impossibilities to the man who has only his own selfish needs and his own selfish ambition to urge him on." And so, when poor MacGregor thought of thefutureof his boys, his otherwise unflinching heart was rent in twain.
Meanwhile, the erection of the government fortress at Inversnaid proceeded rapidly, though he did all in his power to retard it; and he had the mortification to see the stones of his own dwelling-house and of the cottages of his tenantry used in construction of the barrack and bastions.
A builder named Naysmith, from Edinburgh, contracted to build this fort of Inversnaid; but his operations were frequently and roughly interrupted.
It was commenced during the winter season, and he and his workmen lodged in huts near the edifice.
One night, when the snow was falling heavily in great and feathery flakes, they were roused by some travellers noisily demanding shelter. On the door being opened, a number of fierce-looking MacGregors, with their plaids and bonnets coated with snow, rushed in, menaced the poor workmen with drawn swords, and reviled them bitterly.
Being defenceless and unarmed men, they were not slain by Rob Roy's followers, but they were driven half naked through the snow to a distance, when Greumoch and young Coll dismissed them, after exacting from them a solemn oath that they would never again enter the MacGregors' country.
Whether the same masons returned or not we have no means of knowing; but the fort was ultimately finished and garrisoned. "Mr. Naysmith," says Robert Chambers, "being held by Government to a contract which he could not fulfil, was seriously injured in his means by this affair; but its worst consequence was the effect of exposure on that dreadful winter night on his health. He sunk under his complaints, and died about eighteen months after."
When the fort was complete, the works were mounted with cannon, and the barrack within it was occupied by three companies of Lord Tyrawley's regiment, the South British Fusiliers, under Major (formerly Captain) Huske, with express orders to keep the MacGregors in check and to make short work with them on every occasion—orders not to be misconstrued.
During the progress of this—to Rob Roy—most obnoxious erection, he lurked with MacAleister in the cavern near Loch Lomond; the same place which, as we have said, sheltered the gallant King Robert I., after the battle of Dalree, where the famous Brooch of Lorn was torn from his shoulder. It is near Craigrostan and Inversnaid, on the eastern bank of the loch.
The entrance is near the edge of the water, and is partly concealed by great masses of rock, like a fallen Cyclopean wall, which have been shaken by the volcanic throes of nature from the crags above. Amid these masses, the wild foxglove, the purple heather, the green whin, and dense brushwood of every kind flourish, serving to conceal the access, which is every way one of peril and difficulty.
Here he was perfectly secure, though he could hear drums beating in Inversnaid; and sometimes he ventured at night to leave it, and visit his wife and children, who resided under Greumoch's care, in an obscure hut among the mountains of Breadalbane; and on these occasions he twice narrowly escaped being taken when returning to his retreat.
Once, when travelling with three followers, in a solitary and sequestered place near Loch Earn, a beautiful sheet of water, from the shore of which the mountains start in bold and rocky grandeur, he suddenly found himself face to face with seven horsemen, in red uniforms, with conical grenadier caps, on the blue flaps of which the "white horse" of Hanover was embroidered. In fact, they were seven horse grenadiers of Captain MacDougal's troop, which was then attached to the garrison of Inversnaid.
The tattered yet warlike aspect of MacGregor, the well-known red and black checks of his tartan, his powerful figure and ruddy-coloured beard, made them certain that he was Rob Roy, the outlaw, and with shouts of "MacGregor!—MacGregor Campbell!" some drew their swords, while others took pistols from their holsters and prepared for an attack.
Rob turned to seek safety in flight; but the soldiers fired, and his three companions fell mortally wounded. Infuriated by this, he sprang up the steep rocks, where their horses could not find footing, and taking the pistols from his belt, fired repeatedly, with calm and stern determination, sending shot after shot at his baffled pursuers, who remained on the narrow roadway by the loch side, trampling his dying clansmen under their horses' hoofs, and brandishing their swords while they menaced and reviled him.
So good was his aim that he killed three of the soldiers and wounded four of their horses. On this, the remainder galloped off, and left him to pursue, after nightfall, the secret way to his wild abode.
He reached it in safety, but by some means the horse grenadiers, patrols of whom were constantly abroad, succeeded in tracking him to its vicinity; thus, a day or two after the last affair, when he and MacAleister were issuing forth about dawn, in search of such food as the mountains afforded, they suddenly found themselves beset by a party, commanded by Captain MacDougal in person.
With a loud hurrah, the troopers, who were about thirty in number, put spur to their horses, and dashed in single file along the narrow footway on the eastern shore of Loch Lomond; but one, who outrode all the rest, speedily came up with Rob Roy.
"The thousand guineas are mine!" he shouted, and raising himself in his stirrups, he dealt so furious a blow with his long and ponderous cavalry sword at MacGregor, that he beat down his guard, and would inevitably have cleft him to the teeth by the next stroke, but for a circular iron plate which he wore within his bonnet. The blow, however, brought him to the ground, and as he fell he exclaimed—
"To your gun, MacAleister!—to your gun, if there is a shot in it!"
"A witch, and not your grandmother, wrought your nightcap!" cried the astonished trooper, when finding that his sword rung on MacGregor's head; and he had his hilt drawn back to deal the fallen man a deadly forward home thrust, when a ball from the long Spanish musket of the faithful henchman pierced his heart. He fell from his saddle lifeless and bleeding, and was dragged by his terrified horse (for one foot hung in a stirrup) down the steep bank towards the water, where steed and corpse disappeared together.
MacAleister now assisted his foster-brother to rise, and escaping MacDougal and the rest of his troopers, they made a long detour, and reached their gloomy cavern unseen and in safety.
A noble named the Duke of Athole, who was in close correspondence with the Government at Edinburgh, now conceived the hope of entrapping Rob Roy, and announced to the Secretary of State and other officials, that he had a sure plan for making him a prisoner.
As this peer was one of the leading Jacobites of the time, and as all his sons were involved in the various armed Risings for the House of Stuart, it is extremely difficult to conceive why he should have leagued himself with the oppressors of the hapless MacGregor, unless he had been influenced by the Duke of Montrose, or was inspired by the strange animosity which so many cherished against the Clan Alpine.
The duke contrived to send to Rob Roy a letter, by a messenger, who found him either in or near his miserable hiding-place. This missive contained a pressing invitation to see him immediately at the castle of Blair, and offered horses for his conveyance there.
It was now the summer of 1717.
Although Rob Roy had every reason to believe that Athole, from the similarity of their political views had no personal animosity to him, he would not fail to remember, that he had at one time leagued himself with the Whig faction, and had taken from the English ministry the sum of a thousand pounds for his signature to the treaty of Union, ten years ago, though he hadpubliclyopposed it in all its stages in Parliament.
So MacGregor was too wary to trust himself in such slippery hands without some firm assurance of safety. He, therefore, wrote to the duke, delicately hinting the want of confidence he now felt in most men; the desperation of his circumstances, the condition of his homeless wife and children, and wishing to have his grace's commands in writing.
In reply, the wily duke "gave him the most solemn promises of protection, adding, that he only wished to have some private conversation with him on certain political points. This was followed by an emissary, who gave even more positive assurances that no evil was intended, and then handed him aprotection from Government. On seeing this our hero consented, and fixed a time for being at the duke's residence."
Accompanied by MacAleister, he duly appeared on a day in July at the castle of Blair, in a chamber of which the duke had treacherously concealed an officer and sixty soldiers.
The castle is a baronial edifice of great extent and unknown antiquity; one portion of it is still named the Comyns Tower, from John of Strathbolgie, who built it, and it has stood many a siege in the stormy times of old. A forest of splendid trees and a vast expanse of beautiful scenery are around it.
The wandering life led by MacGregor had now imparted somewhat of wildness to the aspect and costume of his henchman and himself.
His eyes were sunken and had become keen and fierce, as those of one who in every sound, even to the rustle of a dry leaf, heard the tread of an enemy. Long untrimmed and unshorn, his hair and curly beard waved in masses about his weatherbeaten face. His red tartans, every thread of which had been spun by Helen's hands, her labour of love, were worn and frittered. His coat was made of coarse homespun black and white wool in its natural state, just as it came from the sheep's back, with two rows of large wooden buttons; and he wore a red woollen shirt, for the Highlanders still disdained linen and cotton as effeminate.
He had an eagle's feather and a sprig of pine in his bonnet; his target, battered and dinted by many a blade and bullet, was slung on his left shoulder, and he had as usual his sword, dirk, and pistols, when, all unconscious of the wicked snare that was laid for him, he and his follower presented themselves at the splendid residence of the Duke of Athole.
The latter, who had been made aware of his approach, received him, apparently, with great cordiality.
"I know not how to express the joy I feel in having so brave a gentleman in my house," said he, "but, as a first favour, I must beg of you to lay aside your sword and pistols."
"Wherefore, my lord?" asked Rob, who felt surprised at a request so unusual.
"The duchess is somewhat timid, and the sight of such things always alarms her."
"By my faith, Athole, had she seen her rooftree in flames, and as much of her own blood shed as the goodwife of Inversnaid has seen in her time, the sight of an armed man would not cause uneasiness," replied Rob, with a sigh of anger, as he unbuckled his sword-belt, took the dirk and pistols from his girdle, and said, "but where is your good lady, duke?"
"In the garden, where we shall join her."
"MacAleister, keep my claymore and tacks for me, and await me here," said Rob, handing the weapons to his henchman, through whose mind some vague suspicions floated, as he never once removed his keen glance from the face of the duke, on whom he gazed as if he would have read his soul. But now Rob and his host descended by a flight of steps into the garden of the castle.
The duchess, Katherine, who was a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, came hurriedly forward to meet the famous outlaw, of whom she had heard so much, and to whom she frankly presented her hand to kiss,—for she was as yet ignorant of the vile plot her husband had framed.
She then presented to him her son, the little Lord Tullybardine, who eight-and-twenty years after was to unfurl the banner of Prince Charles Edward in Glenfinnan; and poor Rob, when he saw the rich dress of the fair-haired boy, thought with a sigh of his own sons, who were at times compelled to share the abode of the fox and the eagle.
"MacGregor," exclaimed the duchess, on seeing him without a sword; "MacGregor here, andunarmed!"
Rob discovered in a moment that he was the victim of some perfidy, for by this simple exclamation the duchess proved that her husband had been guilty of falsehood. He bestowed a glance of stern inquiry on the duke, who coloured deeply, and said with an air of manifest confusion—
"I thought your sword might prove troublesome if anything unpleasant occurred between us."
"Between friends—between a guest and a host—what could occur that would be unpleasant?" replied MacGregor; "Athole, I understand you not."
"You will understand this,Mr.MacGregor," said the duke, suddenly throwing aside all disguise, "that you have committed such wild work along the Highland border since the battle of Sheriffmuir, ay, since you harried the lands of Kippen, after the battle of Killycrankie, that I must detain you."
"Detain?" repeated Rob, with surprise and contempt.
"And send you to Edinburgh."
"Where I should swing on a gibbet, a holiday sight for the psalm-singing burgesses, even as Alaster of Glenstrae was swung after the field of Glenfruin! Am I then snared—betrayed?" exclaimed Rob, starting back, and looking round for the means of defence or escape; but the high walls of the garden were on three sides, and the towers of the castle closed in the fourth, and therein was his faithful henchman, whom he could not desert in peril, even could he have made an escape from the garden. "Dare you tell me, Duke of Athole," he resumed, "that you have betrayed me?"
"Phrase it as you please, I——"
"Has a man of your rank and name a soul so mean, so vile, that he will forfeit honour and faith to win the paltry reward offered for the head of a loyal and unfortunate gentleman, whom tyranny and oppression have covered with ruin, and driven to despair and shame?"
Deadly pale and terrified by this unexpected scene, the gentle duchess shrunk close to her husband, who when MacGregor made a forward stride, laid his hand on his sword.
"Sir," said he, "do you threaten me, in my own castle of Blair?";
"Villain!" exclaimed MacGregor, "you shall live to repent the deed of to-day."
Clenching his right hand, he would have struck the duke to the earth, but for a piteous shriek which burst from his lady. At that moment the iron gate of the Comyns Tower was thrown furiously open, and an officer rushed forth, sword in hand, followed by sixty soldiers, who instantly surrounded MacGregor, and beat him down with the butt-ends of their muskets.
"Had you surrendered in proper time, Mr. MacGregorCampbell," said the duke, with ungenerous irony, "we had not been compelled to resort to these rough measures in capturing you."
Rob Roy laughed scornfully.
"You would have asked me to surrender, my lord duke; but for a MacGregor to surrender is to die with ignominy; to resist to the end is to die with honour to ourselves and our forefathers. A hundred and twenty years of oppression have made us what we are now; but a time may come when even the cunning Lowlander shall weep for the snare of to-day, and shall tremble at the vengeance of Clan Alpine!"
"Zounds! but you are a bold fellow to be a gentleman-drover—a seller of black cattle," said the duke, mockingly.
"Do not condescend to sneer at an unfortunate man, my lord; it was honester to sell Scottish cattle than our good old Scottish kingdom. I have sold many a thousand head of stots and stirks to the English; but I would rather have died—yea, upon a common gibbet—than have sold the free land of my forefathers, as Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage—even as you and others sold yours on that black Beltane day, in 1707!"
"Tie this fellow with cords, and away with him," said the duke, rendered furious by this taunt.
He was then secured with ropes, and dragged from the castle to the adjacent village, where he was thrust into a cottage and kept under a strong escort till his captor made further arrangements.
Bound and manacled like the fugitive bankrupt, the rebel and outlaw they had made him, and which they so ungenerously assumed him to be, MacGregor for a time felt all the bitterness and despair that could sting a spirit so generous, so proud and untameable, when reflecting on the perfidious stroke of fortune which thus placed him so completely at the mercy of his tormentors.
He thought of the joy and triumph of Montrose and Killearn, of Carden, Luss, Aberuchail, and others, whom his sword had so long kept at bay; he thought of the grief of his homeless wife and children, whom that sword had been so often drawn to feed and to defend. He thought of the shameful and ignominious death which awaited him as surely as the breath of Heaven was in his nostrils; he thought of his landless, nameless, broken and degraded clan, left without a head to direct, or a leader to avenge them, and he well-nigh wept in his agony of soul!
MacAleister, on beholding him dragged across the lawn, surrounded by a company of soldiers, uttered a shout of grief and rage, as he sprang from one of the windows of the castle.
Some there were who rashly made an effort to stop him, but with his sword in one hand and his dirk in the other he dashed them aside like children, and escaping a few shots that were fired after him, fled with the speed of a roebuck towards the river Tilt, into which he plunged and disappeared.
Some averred that he was drowned, as the stream was swollen by a summer flood; but it was otherwise, for he reached in safety the hut where Helen MacGregor resided, and related what had happened,
"A Dhia!" she exclaimed, as she threw up her hands in despair; "not Fingal's self could save him now!"
"The Red MacGregor is not out of the land of the heather yet," said MacAleister, hopefully, as he prepared to return to watch over, and, if possible, to succour him.
But Helen experienced all the bitterness of a sorrow that waswithout hope.
The Duke of Athole immediately wrote to Lieutenant-General Carpenter, who had succeeded John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, as Commander-in-Chief in Scotland (the general was also Governor of Minorca), informing him that he had "captured Robert MacGregor Campbell, the famous outlaw and rebel, for whose apprehension a large sum had been so long offered by the authorities."
He requested the general to send from Edinburgh a body of troops to escort the prisoner to that city, and, in compliance with his wish, a troop of Lord Polwarth's Scottish Light Horse (now the 7th Hussars), marched so far as Kinross.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate MacGregor was kept a close prisoner, manacled with cords, and guarded day and night by the vassals of the duke, and a party of Captain MacDougal's Horse Grenadiers, whom he had obtained from the officer commanding in Perth.
In a short time it was known all over Scotland that Rob Roy was a captive; but the mode of his capture, and the foul treachery which characterized it, covered Athole with disgrace, though he seems to have felt no small vanity at the success of his snare, if we may judge from a letter which he wrote to John, Duke of Roxburgh, who was Secretary of State for North Britain, minutely detailing the affair.
Panting for freedom and for vengeance, both of which were justly his, Rob Roy was kept under the military escort at a place called Logierait, which lies eight miles north of Dunkeld; there he had been conveyed after his capture in the castle of Blair.
It was a dark and boisterous night when the troops began their march from the latter place, with the prisoner still bound and tied to a horse; a horse grenadier with his unslung carbine riding on each side of him. The clouds were driven in black masses along the summits of Ben-ghlo and Cairn-na-Gabar (or the mountain of the goats), and the roaring wind rolled over the thick old forests of Blair Athole, bowing the trees till their masses seemed to heave like the waves of the sea, in the fitful gleams of the moon. On halting at Logierait, the duke ordered MacGregor to be kept there securely, until a properly-mounted escort of his own people was in readiness to convey him to Edinburgh. The duke was resolved that the whole merit of the capture should remain with himself, and that even the king's troops should not share it.
But this vanity proved in the end his own defeat.
Rob Roy, on finding himself in one of the miserable cottages of the village, began to hope that he might perhaps achieve an escape. As a preliminary, he begged the sergeant who commanded the troopers, to undo the cords which bound his hands, that he might write a farewell letter to his unhappy wife, who had then found shelter in the little farmhouse of Portnellan, at the head of Loch Katrine.
The sergeant was a humane man; he said something about his own wife and little ones who were far away in old Ireland, and he did as Rob requested, though in defiance of express orders.
Then, as he had been liberal in supplying the soldiers with whisky and ale, they became friendly with MacGregor, and so, after a time, the letter was written; but there was a difficulty in procuring a messenger to Loch Katrine, as several MacGregors had located themselves thereabout, and reprisals were dreaded.
The stormy night wore on, and ere long all the soldiers were sleeping, save one, who stood with his loaded carbine at the door of the cottage.
To MacGregor it seemed as if this man pitied him, as he had been more gentle than his comrades, and had ministered to his comfort, so far as he dared, since the time of his betrayal at Blair.
Being strong, active, and wiry as a mountain stag, to rush on this trooper and wrench away his carbine would have been an easy task to MacGregor, but the key of the cottage door hung at the waist-belt of the sleeping sergeant; thus the preliminary scuffle would only serve to rouse the whole party, and ensure his being shot down by some of them.
As these ideas occurred to the captive, he surveyed the sentinel, whose gaze was never turned from him. With a swarthy, almost olive-tinted face, and deep, dark eyes, he was a stout and handsome young man; and his profusely-braided uniform, with its heavy red cuffs, his Horse Grenadier cap, and tasselled boots, became him well. He had his right hand on the lock of his carbine, the barrel of which rested in the hollow of his left arm.
"How goes the night?" asked MacGregor.
"Twelve has just struck on the kirk clock without," replied the soldier; "and the night is wild and eerie yet. You can hear the sough of the wind among the trees, and the roar of the Tay, too."
"You are, I think, a south-country man, by your accent," said MacGregor.
"Yes," replied the trooper, drily, as he was loth to become too familiar with a prisoner of a character so formidable, and, moreover, the sergeant might be awake.
"Take another taste of the whisky, man: there is a drop in the quaich yet. What part of the south are you from?"
The trooper drained the little wooden cup, and replied—
"I come from Moffatdale; my auld mother bydes in a bit thatched housie at Cragieburnwood. Weary fall the day I ever left it to become a soldier!"
"Moffatdale," said Rob, ponderingly; "many a good drove of short-legged Argyleshires I have had driven through it to the southern markets at Carlisle and Penrith. I know well the place, the Hartfell——"
"And Queensbury Hill, Loch Skene, and the Greymare's Tail, and Yarrow wi' a' its dowie dens!" added the soldier, with kindling eyes.
"Once when there I fought some militiamen, and gave them good cause to remember Rob Roy; though perhaps the loons knew not my name."
"When was this?" asked the soldier, earnestly.
"A year or so after the Union. It was in a summer gloaming, when I was riding northward near Moffat village, I heard the cries of a woman in anguish. They came from a deep, dark hollow called the Gartpool Linn——"
"Weel ken I the place," said the soldier.
"A true Highlander has ever his sword at the service of a friend, or the defenceless. I rode into the dark dingle, and found some rascally militiamen, with a queen's officer, about to hang some unfortunate gipsies; but, by my faith! I gave them their kail through the reek. I threw one half of them into the water, drove off the rest, and passed two feet of my claymore through the body of the officer, who must have been a tough fellow, for he seemed never a bit the worse when I saw him last at the field of Sheriffmuir. I cut down the poor gipsies, who hung on the lower branch of a tree, but they were dead——"
"All?"
"All, except one—a boy about the age of Coll—my own boy Coll, whom I may never see again; in this world, at least," added MacGregor, with a burst of emotion.
The soldier, who had listened to this anecdote with deep interest, said,—
"You did more, MacGregor; you gave some money to the poor harmless lassie that lay at the foot of the tree—money to comfort her ere you went away."
"Yes, perhaps I did; but how know you that?"
"She was my sister, and I am the half-hanged gipsy lad whom you saved, MacGregor."
"You!" exclaimed the other, with astonishment in his tone.
"Yes," said the soldier, giving his hand to the outlaw; "I enlisted in Polwarth's Light Horse after that, and have smelt powder at Ramillies, at Oudenarde, and Malplacquet. Then I became a Horse Grenadier. Oh! MacGregor, what can I do to serve and thank you for the brave deed of that doleful summer evening?"
"Get me a messenger," said MacGregor, huskily; "one who will take this letter to my poor forlorn wife."
"I shall," replied the soldier, in a whisper, as he glanced uneasily at his sleeping comrades; "and I shall do more; the best horse in the troop shall be at your service before the day dawns if another cannot be had!"
"Say you so?" exclaimed MacGregor, whose heart leaped with joy.
"Yes, so sure as my name is Willie Gemmil, even if I should be shot for it at the drumhead."
"I thank you,—I thank you! my wife, my bairns!" said Rob, in a broken voice. "You know, soldier, what I have been—think of what I am. I have much of goodness, of kindness, of charity, of love in my heart; yet men deem me a savage, and seek to make me one. It may be that in my desperation and fury, when fired by the sense of unmerited wrong, I have done severe things; but the memory of the station I have lost, and of the success I once hoped to achieve, add deeper bitterness to my fallen fortunes now. 'Tis well that old Donald of Glengyle is in his grave, and knows not the fate of his son!"
When day broke, Gemmil was relieved from his post, and exerted himself to procure a messenger, with a fleet and active horse.
On the man coming to the door of the cottage, having been instructed by the gipsy trooper what to do, he dismounted at the moment that Rob Roy, with the sergeant's permission, came forth to give the letter and some special message to Helen MacGregor.
Rob's emotion was great on recognizing in the messenger who had volunteered so readily, his foster-brother MacAleister, who had been hovering about Logierait in the hope of achieving something; but beyond a keen, quick glance nothing passed between them; but that glance contained a volume.
The eyes of the whole troop were upon Rob, yet he sprang past them, leaped into the empty saddle of the messenger's horse, and urged it at full speed towards the bank of the Tay.
"Boot and saddle! To horse and after him!" exclaimed the sergeant, while a scattered volley of carbine bullets whistled after MacGregor; but long before the troop horses were bitted and saddled, he had plunged into the foaming river, crossed it, and disappeared.
The vexation and chagrin of the Duke of Athole were extreme, when about an hour after this occurrence he arrived with a band of his own retainers, all well mounted and armed with swords and musketoons, to escort the prisoner to Edinburgh, and found no trace of him but the letter he had written to Helen, and the cords with which he had been so ignominiously bound.
For a time the fortification and garrison of Inversnaid were a complete check upon the projects of Rob Roy; but he resolved ere long to capture the works and expel the soldiers.
Though of small value in some respects, his lands had been sufficient, in those frugal days, for the maintenance of his family and dependants; and, as his ancestral rocks and hills, he loved them dearly. "It is felt as a strange and uncouth association (to quote the "Domestic Annals of Scotland"), that Steele, ofTatlerandSpectatormemory—kind-hearted, thoughtless Dicky Steele—should have been one of the persons who administered in the affairs of the cateran of Craigrostan. In the final report of the Commissioners (for forfeited estates) we have the pitiful account ofthe public ruin of poor Rob, Inversnaid being described as of the yearly value of £53. 16s. 8½d., and the total sum realized from it, of purchase-money and interest, £958. 18s. There is much possible reason to believe that it would have been a much more advantageous, as well as humane arrangement, for the public to have allowed these twelve miles of Highland mountains to remain in the hands of their former owner."
In the close of the year he went with Greumoch, MacAleister, and a few other followers to the ducal castle of Inverary, and there affected to submit to the Government, by delivering some forty or fifty swords and pistols to his remote kinsman, Colonel Patrick Campbell, of Finab; from whom he obtained a signed protection; after this act, which was performed merelyto gain time, he could not be molested by the troops or civil authorities.
But he returned to Breadalbane more than ever determined to exert every energy in storming the fortress of Inversnaid, in expelling the garrison, and resolved to spend the last of his life in punishing Montrose, Athole, Killearn, and all who had ever wronged or injured him.
We shall soon see the sequel to these bold projects.
About this time there occurred two circumstances, which—more than any outrage that had preceded them—impelled Rob to attack the Sassenach invaders, for so he deemed them at Inversnaid.
Near Eas-teivil, or the Fall of the Tummel, in the face of a tremendous rock, is a cavern to which there is a narrow path, accessible only to one person at a time. Therein several fugitive MacGregors were surprised by some of Huske's soldiers, who had been conducted there by a spy named MacLaren. One-half were shot down or bayonneted. The others fought their way out, but fell over the rock, and clung to the trees which grew from its face.
There they swung in blind desperation above the foaming stream, "upon which," says the "Statistical Reporter," "the pursuers cut off their arms, and precipitated them to the bottom," to be swept away by the rushing water.
These tidings filled Rob Roy with a glow of fury, which the second event was in no way calculated to cool.
It chanced that on a day in spring, his second son, Ronald, a boy in his fourteenth year, despite the intreaties of his mother, and the injunctions of his father, strolled over the hills with his fishing-rod, along the banks of Loch Arclet, and actually fished within sight of Inversnaid.
Little Ronald was brave as a lion. Once he had climbed the giddiest of the rocks above Loch Lomond, with his dirk in his teeth, to destroy the nest of a gigantic iolar or mountain eagle, which preyed on the lambs of a poor widow who was his foster-mother.
He was generous, too, as he was brave, for the boy once nearly perished in the deep drift of a corrie, when searching amid the winter snow for the lost sheep of a poor herdsman who was sick. Every way in spirit Ronald was his father's son!
On this day in spring, when his fish-basket was pretty well filled with spotted trout, and the long mountain-shadows cast by the setting sun began to remind him of the distance that lay between Loch Arclet and the secluded little farm of Portnellan, he was preparing to quit his sport, when three redcoats suddenly appeared on the narrow footway, so Ronald turned to fly.
That he strove to avoid them in those days need not excite wonder; for such were the atrocities of the British and Hessian troops in the Highlands, and so much was their uniform abhorred for generations after, that many a Highlander, who in manhood has led his company or regiment to the storming of Badajoz and the fields of Vittoria and Waterloo, when a boy was wont to fly to the woods for concealment, when by chance he saw a red-coat on the roads that led to the chain of forts in the Great Glen of Caledonia.
A pistol-shot fired by one of these strangers now made Ronald pause, as it struck a rock before him, and turning, with a flushed brow and an agitated heart, he found himself confronted by Major Huske and two soldiers, with whom he had been shooting, scouting, or rambling by the side of Loch Arclet.
Enraged to find himself thus molested, on the land which Ronald knew to be his father's heritage, he laid his hand on his dirk and boldly confronted the major, whose large, square, red-skirted coat, three-cornered hat, and Ramillies wig, were all fraught with terrors, which the boy sought to conceal, for he felt that it would ill become his father's son to quail beneath a Saxon eye.
"Will you sell your fish, my little man?" asked the major; but Ronald knew as little of English as the major did of Gaelic so a soldier had to act as interpreter for them.
"No," replied Ronald, sullenly.
"Then as we want some at the garrison, we shall be compelled to appropriate what you have," said Huske, peeping into the basket; "I warrant the money offered will not be allowed to lie on the heather."
"Take the fish if you want them, and let me be gone," replied Ronald, throwing his basket down.
"Whither go you?" asked Huske, suspiciously.
"To my home."
"Where is it?"
"Among the mountains—where you would not be wise to follow," replied the boy, boldly.
The soldier perhaps interpreted this with some awkwardness or severity, for Huske exclaimed furiously—
"'Sdeath! you young rascal; do you speak thus to me?"
"And why not, when I am a son of the Red MacGregor?" was the rash boy's response.
"Zounds! I thought as much," exclaimed Huske, with a malevolent gleam in his eyes; "Come, my lad, don't let us quarrel about a few fish. I have a particular desire to see your worthy father—he is a fine fellow, and a good judge of other men's cattle. We want some of the latter for the garrison. Can you tell me where he is?"
"Yes," said Ronald, with knitted brows and clenched teeth.
"Where, my boy?"
"Where you had better not seek him."
"Pshaw! will not this bribe you?" said Huske, slipping three guineas from his purse into Ronald's hand.
Though nurtured amid civil war and sore adversity, the poor boy knew well the value of the bribe so infamously offered by Huske, who had never forgotten nor forgiven his meetings with Rob Roy in Moffatdale and elsewhere. Ronald drew himself proudly up, and said—
"You ask me—you, a soldier—to betray my father?"
"Nay, nay; to discover——"
"To betray—Saxon captain, or Saxon dog, mince the words as you will!"
"A mutinous cur; but I'll tame him yet," muttered the major.
"You shall never get my father, alive at least; for he is strong and brave as Cuchullin!"
"Some other Highland savage, I suppose; but, egad, we shall see."
"Sir," said the soldier who acted as interpreter, "would it not be a good plan to let the young cub loose, and watch him well? in the end he would be sure to lead us to the old wolf's den."
"He would scramble up rocks where none but a cat or a monkey could follow, or leave us all floundering to the neck in some treacherous bog. No, no, I know better than that. Offer him three guineas more."
The soldier did so.
"You might as well ask me to blow the fire with my mouth full of meal," was Ronald's contemptuous reply; "for I would rather die than betray any man—to a base Saxon churl least of all!"
The soldier clenched his hand, but paused.
"Threaten if you will; but strike not!" said Ronald, with his right hand on his dirk.
"You little villain, would you dare to draw on us?" thundered Major Huske.
"Yes, even if you stood at the head of all your men, and dared to lay a hand on me," replied Ronald, bursting into tears of passion and fury, as he flung the guineas full into Huske's face.
Filled with rage by this insult, the latter rushed upon the brave boy and wrenched his dirk away. Ronald made a desperate resistance, he struggled kicked, bit, and fought; but he was soon dragged into the fort by the soldiers, who cast him, handcuffed, into a dark stone cell.
Huske, a brutal officer of the old Dutch or Revolution school, proposed to tie a cord round the poor boy's head, and twist it with a pistol-barrel or drumstick, until agony compelled him to furnish all the details required about his father's movements; but the officer next in command, Captain Henry Clifford, of the South British Fusiliers,* a humane English gentleman, opposed the cruel idea so vigorously that Huske abandoned it; so Ronald was closely watched, and fed on bread and water.
* New.
He was threatened with being flogged at the halberts, or with being hung on a tree; but nothing would make him tell aught to his father's enemies. Yet, though he kept a brave front to "the Saxons," as he named them, in the fulness of his heart and the solitude of his cell, he wept for his parents, and repeatedly offered up the prayers his mother taught him, and repeated to himself the twenty-second Psalm, "Shi Dhia fhein 'm buachalich" (the Lord is my shepherd).
Oina speedily informed the family at Portnellan of all this. She had now grown to womanhood, and was the wife of Alaster Roy. As a dealer in eggs, butter, and milk, she frequented the fort, and there learned the story of the young angler's capture.
This unwarrantable action filled MacGregor with just indignation, and Helen with lively fears, lest her golden-haired Ronald might be impressed for a sailor or soldier, or perhaps sold to the Dutch planters for a slave; and Rob swore upon the bare blade of his sword to raze Inversnaid to the ground, and to give Huske's flesh to the eagles of Ben Lomond ere the sun of the next Beltane day had risen, while his mother—an aged woman now—vowed that she too would march to the rescue, though armed only with her spindle and scissors.
Before collecting his followers, or making preparations to storm Inversnaid, and expel the royal troops from his patrimony, Rob Roy resolved to make himself well acquainted with the strength and resources of the garrison, and with the number of men and cannon at Major Huske's disposal; and for this service he availed himself of Oina, who brought him daily intelligence of the enemy.
Moreover, he had another very efficient spy in the person of Paul Crubach, whose grotesque figure and quaint conduct made him a welcome visitor to the soldiers, who jested and made fun with him, as a half-witted being; but as usual with such characters in Scotland, there was a "method in the madness" of Paul Crubach.
One night as he sat by the fireside, in the little farmhouse of Portnellan, where Ronald's absence formed a source of perpetual grief, he urged that before attacking Inversnaid the oracle of the "House of Invocation" should be consulted; but Rob Roy though brave as man could be, shrunk from seeking intercourse with the world of spirits.
"Are you afraid?" exclaimed Paul Crubach, striking his cross-staff fiercely on the floor with indignation.
"Afraid, Paul—yes, of the devil."
"Then I shall face the King of the Cats for you, and from him I shall extort the knowledge whether ever againthe three glensshall be ours."
The eyes of MacGregor sparkled.
"The old inheritance of Clan Alpine!" said he; "yes; Glenlyon, Glendochart, and Glenorchy, shall again be ours, Paul, but first I must root out and raze this nest of Saxon hornets at Inversnaid!"
"And set free my red-cheeked Ronald," added Helen, weeping with sorrow and anger, as she twirled her spindle on the clay floor.
"But look before you leap, MacGregor; before marching learn what the oracle may tell," urged the old man; "but I shall learn for you, if I have not, as in past times, a vision before the hour, when, as the bard of Cona says, 'the hunter awakes from his noon-day slumber, and hears in his vision the spirits of the hill.'"
Rob shuddered as Paul spoke, for a strange wild glare flashed in the eyes of this old man, who was supposed to be a seer, possessing the gift of the second sight.
"If the time serves, Paul," resumed MacGregor, who wished to change the subject, "I will inscribe on the rocks of Craigrostan and Inversnaid, in Gaelic letters, my indisputable right thereto, in defiance of the elector and his redcoats."
"Ah! thou art right," said Paul, grinding his teeth and brandishing his cross-staff; "do so, even as MacMillan of South Knapdale, and the MacMurachies of Terdigan and Kilberrie, had their charters carved upon the rocks of their land."
"But alas, Paul, that time may never, never come," said Helen, with a sad smile.
"And little would such charters avail me, good wife, if the good claymore fails," said Rob, with irony in his eye and tone.
"Then," observed Greumoch, who sat in a corner smoking his pipe and oiling his gun, "we have the fair sleek skins of the Saxons whereon to write the story of our wrongs with a pen of pointed steel."
"Enough of this," said Paul Crubach, rising and drawing a deerskin over his shoulders; "the sooner my task begins 'twill be the sooner ended."
"Whither go you, Paul, and at this hour?" asked Rob, attempting to detain his strange guest.
"To consult theTighghairm. Meet me at sunset on the second day from this, at the Ladders, above Loch Katrine, and you will there learn what the future has in store for us; whether we shall be the victors at Inversnaid, whether your boy shall be freed, and whether we shall again possess the three glens, which are the heritage of Clan Alpine, or be vanquished and destroyed."
And before MacGregor, Helen, or Greumoch could interpose, Paul had snatched his cross-staff, and, with his long white hair streaming behind him in elf-locks, had rushed forth into the darkness.
MacGregor, whose intercourse with Englishmen and Lowlanders had made him somewhat more a man of the world than his followers, was nevertheless too strongly imbued with the old superstitions and native predilections of his race and country not to await with considerable interest, though mingled with doubt, the result of those spells which all in the district believed the half-witted Paul Crubach was capable of weaving, or the visions with which he was supposed to be visited.
Accordingly, about the sunset of the second day, MacGregor, well armed as usual, repaired alone to the appointed place of tryst.
The Ladders was the name of a dangerous and difficult track, which then formed the only access to Loch Katrine from Callendar.
He entered the narrow pass, which is half a mile in length. There the rocks are stupendous in height, in some places seeming to impend over the head of the wayfarer; in others, aged weeping birches hang their drooping foliage over the basaltic cliffs from which they spring, adding a wild beauty to the rugged gorge.
Across the summits of this pass, which is a portion of the famous Trossachs, the dying sunlight shone in red and uncertain gleams, through stormy clouds of dusky and saffron tints, for all the preceding night loud peals of thunder had shaken the mountains, and even yet the atmosphere was close and sulphurous.
At last Rob reached the Ladders, which consisted of steps roughly hewn out of the solid rock. By means of these, and ropes suspended from the trees, to be grasped by the hand, the bold and hardy natives of this part of the Highlands were wont to traverse the pass, which, in time of war, one swordsman could defend against a thousand.
Rob slung his target on his shoulder, grasped the ropes, and from step to step swung himself lightly up the beetling rocks until he reached the summit, from whence he could see, far down below, Loch Katrine, a lovely sheet of water ten miles in length, gleaming redly in the last light of the sun, whose rays lingered yet on the vast peak of Benvenue, and on the beautiful hills of Arroquhar, that closed the view to the west.
In the loch is an islet, wherein, during the invasion of Scotland by Oliver Cromwell, the Clan Gregor had placed all their aged men, their women and children, for security. On finding that the only boat remaining was moored at the islet, an English soldier swam across to seize it, but was stabbed to the heart by Iole MacGregor, the grandmother of Rob's foster-brother, Callam MacAleister.
The scenery was alike wild and grand, and the great masses of lurid and dun-coloured thunder-clouds that overhung the darkening hills added to its effect.
With his keen and glittering eyes fixed on the place where the sun had set, Paul Crubach sat on a fragment of volcanic rock. He seemed wan, pale, and weary; his masses of tangled hair and his primitive garb of deerskin seemed to have been scorched by fire, and his bare legs and arms were covered with scars and bruises.
Propping himself on his cross-staff, he arose with apparent difficulty on the approach of MacGregor, who said, with anxiety,—
"In Heaven's name, what has happened—what have you done, Paul?"
"I have opened the House of Invocation. I have consulted the oracle of theTighghairm," said he, solemnly.
"Did it speak?" asked Rob, with growing wonder.
"Listen; I passed the night in the Coir nan Uriskin."
"In the cave of the wild shaggy men!" exclaimed the other, starting with more of actual fear than astonishment in his manner.
"Yea, even there," replied Paul, closing his eyes for a moment, and sighing deeply.
"What did you see—what did you hear?"
"Listen, and I shall tell you what happened."
Paul related that after sunset on the preceding evening he had sought that remarkable cavern or den, which lies at the base of Benvenue.
It is a deep and circular hollow in the side of the mountain, about six hundred yards wide at the top, but narrows steeply towards the bottom, on all sides surrounded by stupendous masses of shattered rock, covered so thickly with wild birches that their interlaced branches almost intercept the sunlight even at noon.
For ages, local superstition has made this place the abode of the Urisks, wild shaggy men, or lubber-fiends, who were fashioned like the ancient satyrs, being half-men and half-goats; thus their very name was fraught with many indescribable terrors, and hence the spot was avoided by the most hardy huntsmen, even at mid-day.
There Paul had repaired as the night was closing in, carrying with him, instead of his cross-staff, the blade of an ancient sword without a hilt, and a black cat securely tied in a bag.
Selecting the very centre of the coir, or hollow, he drew a circle three times round him with the sword-blade, and collecting a quantity of dry branches, dead leaves, and moss, he added some pieces of coffin-boards, brought from his remarkable hut in Strathfillan, and lighted a fire. Amid the growing flames he thrust the sword-blade firmly into the earth, with the point uppermost.
Then he drew from the bag the fated cat, the paws of which were securely tied with a cord. As the increasing flames rose fast, he thrust the poor animal upon the upright sword, impaling it alive, the supposed necessity of the ordeal rendering Paul completely callous and heedless of the cruelty he was perpetrating.
Then the shrill cries of the tortured cat woke a thousand echoes among the rocks of that ghastly hollow, while it spat and bit at the steel on which its blood was dripping to hiss on the fire below. Its jaws were distended, and its protruding eyes glared like opals in the light; its ears were laid flat, and every hair was bristling with fear and agony, till scorched off by the rising flames.
Their lurid light cast strange and fantastic gleams on the rocks of that solemn hollow; and when in the moaning night wind the birches waved their drooping branches to and fro, the whole place seemed to fill with moving figures of quaint and unearthly aspect.
As the yells of the tortured cat woke them up, sharp-nosed foxes peeped forth from their holes with glittering eyes, fleet squirrels scampered up the trees, and the birds screamed and whirred in flocks out of the hollow; but fast and furiously there gathered from all quarters cats, wild and domestic; over the bushes and rocks they came swarming, as if to the rescue, with open mouths, protruding eyes, extended claws, and backs erect; but they were compelled to pause, being unable to enter the charmed circle, or it might be perhaps that the glare of the fire terrified or bewildered them.
Cats in countless numbers—black, white, grey, and brindled—covered all the rocks of the Coir nan Uriskin, according to Paul, denouncing in fury the torment of their companion, till their spitting and hissing sounded like the rush of a waterfall; for though many of these sudden visitors were of the common size and kind, many more were the wild cats of the mountains, which are four times larger than the domestic, with yellow coats, black streaks, thick flat tails, and are armed with claws and teeth well calculated to inspire terror.
Then as the branches of the trees waved to and fro, their shadows on the weather-beaten rocks seemed more distinctly to assume the strange form, the quaint and savage faces of the terrible Urisks, that glimmered and jabbered at these unhallowed proceedings. But the resolute Paul continued to mutter,—
See not this!Hear not that!Round with the spit,And turn the cat!
So he never looked about him nor quailed in his grim work, for he knew that greater terrors would yet surround him ere the fiend he was summoning would appear. For if theGluasa-leabhracame to the rescue of his tortured subject—this terrible king of the cats, distinguished from all others of the mountain by his tiger-like proportions and wondrous strength—Paul knew thatthenwould be the critical moment of his fate; for if his heart failed him on hearing the yell of this half-cat, half-demon, he must be overborne by the whole living mass, which now covered the sides of the Coir nan Uriskin; his body would be rent into a thousand pieces, and thefutureof Clan Alpine would never be learned!
The midnight air was growing dense and sulphurous; gleams of lightning began to play about the bleak summit of Benvenue, and the deep thunder grumbled in the distance. Drops of hot rain were falling heavily too; but Paul felt them not, for his heart leaped within him as he shouted,—
"Wretch, come forth! He is coming!—he is coming!"
The poor cat impaled upon the sword-blade was expiring now; half-roasted alive, its eyeballs yet protruded from their sockets; surcharged with blood, they had become red as rubies, and its mouth opened and shut spasmodically.
White as milk or thistle-down, Paul's long and tangled hair glittered in the wavering fire-light and in the livid gleams that shot athwart the sky; but still he tossed his skeleton arms aloft, and whirled the dying cat upon the sword-blade with a piece of burning brand.
In their sunken sockets Paul's eyeballs blazed like burning coals, for every moment he expected to see the trembling earth open, and the unchained fiend appear before him; but the rocks of the Coir nan Uriskin trembled by no demoniac spell, but with the boom of the pealing thunder alone.
Suddenly there was a splitting roar and a dreadful crash; a blinding sheet of livid flame filled the whole hollow; for a moment the wet rocks seemed to sparkle like masses of crystal, and the trees were seen to toss and twist wildly upward their rending branches in the blast. Then all became darkness and all silence, save when the thunder of the midnight storm grumbled in the distance far away.
A thunderbolt had struck the rocks of the hollow; Paul became senseless, and remembered no more till morning dawned, when he found himself lying near a thunder-riven rock in the Coir nan Uriskin amid the ashes of his extinguished fire, and close by him the charred remains of his victim still impaled by the sword-blade.
The adventures of the night—how much of these were true and how much werefancythe reader may easily determine—had sorely exhausted the strength of this strange old man, to whose narrative Rob Roy listened with astonishment, not unmingled with alarm, for the scene of his spells was fraught with innumerable terrors.
"Thus, MacGregor, I have sinned and perilled my soul for nothing," groaned Paul, closing his eyes, as if in exhaustion; "I have invoked in vain, and in vain has the terrible ordeal of the Tighghairm been undergone!"
"If all this be true, Paul, you were near rousing the devil to little purpose. For had he told you that we would be victorious, we would fight; if defeated and dispersed,stillwould we fight, till the last of us was gathered to his fathers. So for true tidings of the enemy I would rather trust to the lass Oina than to your devilish cantrips."
"You would trust in a woman?" said Paul, disdainfully.
"She can reckon every redcoat in Inversnaid as well as you or I could do, Paul."
"What said St. Colme of Iona? 'Where there is a cow there will be a woman, and where there is a woman there will bemischief; so neither one nor the other ever set foot on the Isle of the Waves inhistime.'"
"An ungallant speech," said Rob, laughing.
"But a true one. Pause and consider well, for a son of Fortune waits and attains his end in peace; but the luckless hastens on unadvisedly, and evil befalls him."
"Dioul!" said the other, with knitted brow; "I am no son of Fortune, but an outlawed son of Alpine! I thank you for your advice, Paul; but return to Portnellan, and get food to restore your wasted strength. I will trust to the kind God above us," he added, uncovering his head, and looking upward, "to Him and to my father's sword, rather than to a voice from hell! To-night I cross the hills to Inversnaid, where my poor boy Ronald and my patrimony are alike kept from me by these Saxon intruders. Coll, Greumoch, MacAleister, and the rest are to follow me with five hundred men. We shall gather at the burn foot, where it flows into Loch Lomond, on the third night from this. Sharp war brings sure peace; and ere the sun of the next day shines upon the mountains, I shall cock my bonnet on the ruins of Inversnaid, or lie low on the heather as death can lay me!"
With these words Rob and Paul Crubach parted.
The latter turned away with tottering steps to seek the farmhouse of Portnellan, where Helen MacGregor, with her boys, Hamish and Duncan, were to wait the issue of the attack upon the king's fort and barrack; while Rob threw his target on his shoulder, and lithely and agilely descended the precipitous ladder in the rocks, and alone, as night was closing, sought the road to Callendar.
The Red MacGregor knew well that the destruction of Inversnaid and the dispersion of its garrison would render him popular even with his enemies; for that fort had been built to overawe the Buchanans, the Colquhouns of Luss, and the Stewarts of Ardvoirlich, as well as the MacGregors; yet none but the latter had the daring to attempt its capture.
It was always garrisoned by a strong party from the castle of Dumbarton, relieved at regular intervals.
Full of thought and of the bold deed he had in contemplation, MacGregor travelled alone by the northern base of Benvenue, from whence, across the waters of Loch Katrine, he could see the lights glittering in the windows of the thatched farmhouse, where his family resided, at Portnellan, near where the western end of that lovely sheet of water flows into Glengyle, and with a prayer on his lips for their protection, and a sigh of hope for the future, he drew tighter his girdle, secured his belted plaid upon his breast by his brooch, and crossed the rugged mountain slope with long strides unerringly in the dark, for the night was moonless, and after a journey of ten or twelve miles, he reached his old lurking-place, the cavern, on the banks of Loch Lomond.
From this place he could overlook the lands that were once his own, and where whilom he had been able to count the grey smoke of a hundred cottages rising in the clear air of an autumn evening, and knew that in these humble abodes all loved him with a love that went beyond the grave; but the times were changed, and with a sigh of bitterness he entered the cavern.
He looked carefully to the flints and priming of his pistols, and casting himself on a bed of dry soft heather, prepared for him in a hollow of the rocks by the careful hands of Oina, he placed his drawn sword beside him, and addressed himself to sleep, as he expected a visit from her in the morning when she could leave the fort, where she had been latterly engaged as the servant of an officer's wife.
Hour after hour passed, and MacGregor heard no sound but the night wind as it swept the bleak mountain side, and tossed the wild whins and brakens that fringed the mouth of his dark hiding-place.
Sleep was stealing gradually over him when some strange dark objects appeared at the cavern mouth. Starting, he snatched up his sword and pistols; but paused, for the figures had short horns, floating beards, and red glaring eyes that peered in at him from behind the ledges of rock.
On the first alarm he thought that soldiers had tracked him hither; then the diablerie of Paul's recent proceedings, and his strange narrative of the night he had passed in the den of the Urisks, flashed upon Rob's memory, and made his flesh creep; for now, head after head, with horns and beard and red glancing eyes, came along the lower edge of the cavern floor, appearing darkly and indistinctly against the dim light without.
MacGregor levelled a pistol and fired; then there was a rush of many feet down the slope, and on springing to the cavern mouth, he found that he had been scared by a herd of poor mountain goats, which he saw now leaping from rock to rock in terror and dismay.
Then Rob laughed aloud at the excitement or overstrained fancy which had caused such unusual emotions of alarm; and he thought of the good King Robert I., who had been similarly startled in the same place. For we are told, that after his defeat by the rebellious Western Highlanders at Dalree in Strathfillan, he fled down the glen, crossed the Falloch, and alone and unattended reached Loch Lomond side, and at Inversnaid took shelter in this same cavern. There he slept in his armour on the bare rocks, with his sword drawn by his side—the sword that was never to be sheathed till Scotland were freed alike from Western rebels and English invaders.
In the mirk midnight, the war-worn king awoke, and was at first astonished, and then amused, to find the cave full of wild mountain goats, whose lair it was; and tradition adds, that Bruce found himself so comfortable among them, that when peace was proclaimed and the Parliament met, he passed "a law whereby all goats should be grass mail (or rent) free."
In that cave King Robert passed the night, and in the morning there came to him Sir Maurice of Buchanan, who conducted him to Malcolm Earl of Lennox.
On the same rock where, perhaps, the Bruce's head was pillowed, Rob Roy dropped into a profound sleep, and the morning sun was shining brightly on the woods of silver birch and sombre pine, and on the green isles of Loch Lomond, when he awoke to find Oina seated near him, with a little basket by her side, and a red plaid drawn over her head, patiently watching him, and waiting the moment when he would be stirring. In one hand she had a hunting-bottle of usquebaugh, and in the other a little quaich formed of juniper and birch staves alternately, smoothly polished, and hooped with silver.
The little girl, with the thick brown tresses described in the first chapter of our story, was now a tall matron, with her dark hair gathered under a curchie. Her brow was thoughtful and severe, for many a time since the day on which her boy companion, Colin Bane, had been slain by Duncan nan Creagh, had she looked death in the face amid flashing swords and flaming rafters; and she was now, as stated, the wife of Alaster Roy MacGregor.
"You have come at last, Oina," said Rob Roy.
"Say not that as a taunt," said she, "for I could not leave the fort of Inversnaid before the gates were opened at daybreak."
"I did not say it tauntingly, Oina," replied Rob, patting her shoulder; "but what of my poor boy Ronald?"
"He is still in a cell, where I cannot have speech with him."
"A cell! How his free Highland soul must abhor such confinement! Patience yet awhile, my boy, for the blades are on the grindstone that ere long shall free you. But do they keep surer watch than usual at Inversnaid?"
"I cannot say; but more of the red soldiers arrived yesterday."
"More?" repeated Rob, starting.
"Yes."
"How many?"
"Forty at least; they came by a boat up Loch Lomond from Dumbarton."
"How many are in the fort now?"
"I have reckoned four companies of eighty men each."
"Three hundred and twenty muskets."
"Nay, for twenty of these have halberts."
"True—the sergeants."
"Then there are sixtairneanach" (thunder-mouths).
"At the gate. I have marked them from the hill; they are six-pound cannon, I believe; but let us once pass the barrier and they will be useless. I have but five hundred claymores, yet I will make an attempt, if it should cost me my life and the lives of all who adhere to me," said Rob Roy, firmly.
"At what hour will you advance?"
"To-morrow night at twelve."
"Good. I shall endeavour to dispose of the sentinel at the gate."
"With the dirk? Nay, I like not that, Oina," said Rob Roy.
"Nay, withthis," she replied, laughing, as she took the hunting-bottle of whisky from the basket in which she had brought a breakfast for MacGregor.
"To-morrow night we muster at the burn foot, near Inversnaid. At twelve the attack will commence—twelve remember, Oina; and if the sentinel be not silenced by you, we must e'en trust to the sledge-hammer first and the steel blade after."
When Oina left him to return to the fort the hours passed slowly and anxiously with MacGregor, who in his hiding-place could hear the drums when they were beaten at daybreak, sunset, and tattoo, in the barrack at Inversnaid; and he prayed that the time might come when that sound, which was rendered, by association, so hateful to a Highland ear, would be hushed among his native hills for ever.