"Absent—where?" said Grahame, biting his long leather gauntlet with undisguised vexation.
Ere the ladies could speak, a scout or spy named MacLaren—the same person whom Rob had met at the inn of Chapelerroch—arrived, breathlessly, to inform the colonel that on the preceding evening he had seen MacGregor with a chosen party of his men at a change-house, or wayside tavern, near Crianlarich in Strathfillan.
"You are sure of this?" said the colonel, sternly and suspiciously.
"Sure as that I now address you, sir."
"If this be true, you shall have ten guineas; but woe to you, rascal, if you deceive us! Sergeant Gemmil, look to this fellow, and if he attempts to give us the slip before we reach Strathfillan shoot him down."
Leaving the farmhouse untouched, for to fire it would have defeated the object in view, the colonel's party, guided by the spy, proceeded up Glengyle, from thence across the Braes of Balquhidder, and just as day began to brighten the mountain peaks, they found themselves at the lonely change-house of Crianlarich, which stood in a sequestered and pastoral part of Strathfillan.
Rob Roy, as the spy informed them, was then in the house; but his men, to the number of twenty, occupied a barn which adjoined it. In that place they feared no surprise, and kept no watch; thus, Colonel Grahame, when he dismounted and approached the barn, on peeping through one of the air openings in the wall, saw the MacGregors lying asleep on some bundles of straw, with their swords, shields, and muskets beside them.
"You are right, fellow," said he to MacLaren, to whom he gave at once the promised guineas. "There are twenty rogues asleep here, and we shall cut them off to a man; but the master thief must be taken before we rouse his followers. Then I shall hang the keeper of this tavern, and burn it down, without studying the scruples of our quartermaster," he added, with a dark frown at Mr. Stewart.
A dismounted trooper applied the heel of his heavy jackboot to the door of the house, and with a single kick made it fly open.
Softly though the troop had approached the dwelling, by riding on the grass or heather, Rob had heard them, and was up, clad, and armed, with his target braced upon his left arm, at the moment the door was broken open.
He put forth his bonnet upon the point of a stick, and in the grey twilight of the morning twenty muskets were discharged at it. Then, before the soldiers could reload, he sprang upon them with a shout, and cut down two. The noise of the volley having brought all his men to their feet, they rushed from the barn and assailed the Grahames in the rear, driving them and the horse grenadiers pell-mell round the house, and severely wounding several of them.
"To the hills! to the hills! and follow me!" shouted Rob, as he slung his shield on his back, and dashed off at his utmost speed towards the mountains.
Under a fire of muskets and carbines, he and his men crossed unhurt a torrent that foamed through the valley, and seeking a path, where few infantry and certainly no cavalry could follow, they began a leisurely retreat up the mountains towards the head of Loch Lomond.
Exasperated by this sudden and unlooked-for escape, Colonel Grahame ordered the horse to make a detour, and the infantry to follow in direct pursuit.
Then began a desultory skirmish, in which the MacGregors had all the advantage; for their tartans blended with the dun-coloured heather and green ferns, while the militia were fatally conspicuous in their blue uniforms. Thus, several were shot, and MacAleister threw the spy, MacLaren, into a mill-race, near the House of Comar, where he was swept away and drowned.
After this, "the Grahames thought proper to withdraw," and thus ended another attempt to capture Rob Roy.
To avenge this defeat, and the capture of his factor, it is related in the "Domestic Annals of Scotland," that the Duke of Montrose got all his farmers in the Lennox armed and mounted, for the purpose of attacking Rob; but Glune-dhu, the nephew of the latter, with the MacGregors of Glengyle, attacked his grace's men, and surrounded and disarmed them. Of this encounter we are unable to furnish the details; but, unfortunately for our hero, the next attempt had a very different result.
In tracing the history of Rob Roy, we now come to one of those dark and supernatural events which, according to Highland tradition, were then a portion of the everyday life of the Scottish mountaineers, and were the result of local influences, and by their minds being deeply imbued in early youth by poetry and music, by legends anterior even to the songs of Ossian, and by the solemn scenery of the vast solitudes which formed their home.
The strange event referred to, occurred in the Tower of Glengyle. Another version of it has been given by a celebrated essayist on the superstitions of the Highlanders, but without stating the locality, or who were the actors therein.
Some days after baffling Colonel Grahame's party at Crianlarich—and while Montrose was planning a raid, to be led by himself in person into the mountains, for the purpose of capturing Rob Roy—the latter, with MacAleister, was hunting in the old Royal forest of Glenfinglas, and among the hills that look down on Glenlochy, a long and narrow vale in Breadalbane, where, in his father's time, Duncan of the Heads resided, and where the ruins of his house are still to be traced among the heather.
Rob and his foster-brother had urged the sport in the good old Highland fashion, for then the clansman would pursue the antlered stag for days, sleeping by night in his tartan plaid on the bleak mountain side; or propped on the beetling rock, with his long gaff, heedless alike of death or danger, would catch the scaly salmon in the leap between the sky and the foaming cascade; but, as a recent author says, "nothing short of starvation would make him take part in the brutal German battues which now prevail in the Highlands."
When on hunting expeditions, Rob always gave the salmon taken, the venison stalked, or the capercailzie and ptarmigan shot by his long Spanish gun, to the poor, or to the aged who were no longer able to hunt for themselves; and often he shared their huts, however humble; for north of the Highland border Rob Roy was everywhere welcome among the people.
The short autumn day was closing; the mountains were growing dark; the eagle and hawk had gone to their eyry in the rocks of Benvenue, though the wild grey geese were still floating on the bosom of Loch Voil, when Rob and MacAleister took their way across the hills to return home; but a storm came on as they descended Glengyle, so instead of progressing towards Loch Katrine, MacGregor repaired to the residence of his nephew, who, in conformity to the oppressive laws passed against the clan, was compelled to name himself Gregor MacGregorGrahame, yet is better known as Glune-dhu, and captain of the castle of Doune under Prince Charles Edward.
On reaching the tower, Rob found that his nephew, the laird, with all his followers, was absent on a hunting-match with the Earl of Breadalbane; but the old housekeeper and butler made him welcome. The two hunters had brought more than enough with them to sup the whole household, for Rob had two bunches of blackcock and curlew at his sword-belt, and MacAleister carried a small red deer slung over his shoulder.
A blazing fire of bog-pine and fir-cones was made in the arched fireplace of the old hall, and there the hunters prepared to pass the night comfortably, after the toil of their late hunting expedition.
Supper over, a jorum of hot whisky-toddy was brewed in an antique punchbowl; the iron gates of the tower were secured for the night; the old servants retired to their beds, and Rob and MacAleister sat by the ruddy hearth, talking of their late wanderings, of tidings they expected to hear from Seaforth about a rising in the Western Isles; and without any intention of passing the remainder of the night elsewhere than by that jovial fire, and wrapped in their ample plaids.
Their late arduous wanderings in the keen cold mountain air, with the warmth of the glowing fire and the steaming punch, combined to make Rob drowsy, and ere long he dozed off into a sound sleep; but MacAleister, as he afterwards related, felt in no way able to follow his leader's example, though particularly anxious to do so. He became acutely wakeful, for a strange and unwonted anxiety weighed upon his mind, and at times a shudder passed over his frame—agrue, as the Lowlanders term it—a supposed sign that an unseen spirit hovers near you, or that some one is treading on the ground which is to form your grave, however far away that ground may be.
His eyes wandered over the old and faded family portraits which adorned the hall; he sought to shun them; but they seemed to exercise a strange fascination over him, which compelled him to look at them again and again, till they grew, to his alarm, almost instinct with life.
There was Alaster of Glenstrae, who led the clan to battle at Glenfruin, and who died on the gibbet at Edinburgh, looking grimly out of his iron helmet. There, too, was Colonel Donald MacGregor, in his wig and breastplate, looking as fierce as when he slew Duncan nan Cean, or carried terror among the Westland Whigs when the Highland host came down in the days of the Covenanters.
There were others in laced coats and tartan plaids, but all armed to the teeth—worthies who had departed this life with a foot of cold steel in their bodies, leaving more quarrels and broadswords than silver or gold behind them; and as he turned from one pale face to another, while the candles burned down and the fire waxed low on the hearth, MacAleister began to feel how,
By dim lights seen, the portraits of the deadHave something ghastly, desolate, and dread!
Add to all this the wavering gleams of the fire, the weird shadows they cast across the ancient hall, and the solemn sough of the midnight wind without, as it swept down Glengyle and moaned through the machicolated battlements of the old tower, shaking its grated windows, and waving too and fro the russet-coloured tapestry that overhung the doorway, driving out the brown moths to flutter about the fading lights.
Meanwhile Rob Roy slept heavily.
By Highland superstition it had long been understood, that when two persons were left thus, they should either both sleep at the same time or keep each other awake; for if one slept, the other was left to the mercy of the spirits of the air.
MacAleister called to MacGregor, but received no answer, and in the vaulted hall the hollow echoes of his own voice affrighted even his bold spirit. Then as a sudden and heavy chill fell over his sturdy frame, and a sickly and deadly fear stole into his heart, he strove to rise and grasp his foster-brother, but found himself frozen, riveted, chained, as it were, to his seat by a power or will superior to his own!
At that moment the arras which closed the lower end of the hall, and which had been violently shaken from time to time by the stormy gusts of wind, was suddenly parted, and there entered two tall and grim-looking gillies, in the Highland dress, and fully armed, bearing lighted candles in antique silver branches.
Other figures, misty, wavering, and indistinct, appeared beyond; but in the gillies MacAleister, with horror in his soul, recognized two MacGregors whom he had seen slain in his boyhood, and whom he had actually assisted to bury near the ruined church on Inchcailloch.
Behind the bearers of the candles came a bearded piper, with his pipe on his shoulder, the drones decorated by long tartan streamers; the bag was distended, and he fingered the notes of the chanter rapidly, while his pale face seemed swollen by the exertion of playing; but neither from the instrument nor the tread of his feet came the slightest sound, as he passed like a shadow slowly round the hall, without looking on either side, though his glazed eyes shone with a blue weird gleam in the light of the fire; and then the henchman discovered, by a peculiar mole and a wound on the right cheek, that this was the phantom of Alpine's grandsire, who played the clan to Glenfruin, and was said to have been spirited away by theDosine Shie, or fairies.
Then followed many ladies and gentlemen of the House of Glengyle, who had been in their graves for years, with grey visages, wan, ghastly, and solemn, and wearing costumes quaint in fashion and long since obsolete, or to be seen only in such portraits as those which hung around the hall.
Spellbound, incapable of motion, and while his leader slept soundly, MacAleister saw all these phantoms take seats at the table beside them; the ladies spreading out and gracefully disposing the ample flounces of their great tub-fardingales, as if in life; the gentlemen adjusting the curls of their cavalier locks, or great perukes; others shook out the folds of their belted plaids, or ran their wan and wasted fingers through their long wavy beards, as they seemed to converse with each other, to assent or dissent, and sometimes frown—conversed, but without a sound, for the pinched blue features of their long and awfully solemn faces moved spasmodically, and their gestures varied, as if they talked, but not a voice or a word reached the ear of the terrified MacAleister.
At last one who closely resembled the portrait of Alaster of Glenstrae, for his helmet was crested by the entire wing of a golden eagle, and whose neck was moreover distorted as if by strangulation (for Glenstrae had been ignominiously hanged), produced a pack of cards, and then all proceeded to play.
The cards were scarcely dealt, when MacAleister saw the figure of Oina—of his daughter—she who had perished at Inversnaid, with her dark hair dishevelled and floating about her shoulders, wearing the very plaid in which her husband buried her, hovering at the back of those unearthly visitors; and with, deadly fear he perceived that she was regarding him with a sad yet tender smile in her black lack-lustre eyes.
It was remarkable that Oina's form was more palpable than the rest, for some who had died ages ago were transparent, so that he saw other objects through them.
After a time the players relinquished the cards, and some betook them to what the Highlanders calledpalmermore(the tables), which requires three on each side, who throw the dice alternately; but though shaken violently, neither boxes nor dice emitted the slightest sound.
Now a muffled figure glided to the side of Oina.
On her regards being again turned to her father, this muffled figure threw off a wet and dripping plaid, and lo! MacLaren, the spy, whom he had drowned in the millrace at Comar, stood before him, with a malignant and demoniac grin on his cold and damp visage.
He drew near and breathed on the face of MacAleister, and so cold was that breath, so icy and chill, that it seemed to freeze the marrow in his bones.
At that moment a cock crew, and with a shriek the spellbound man started to his feet, to find the fire extinguished, the candles burned out in their sockets, MacGregor still muffled in his plaid and fast asleep in a chair beside him, while grey dawn stole through the grated windows of the gloomy castle hall.
Rob Roy was instantly roused by MacAleister, who, in an excess of terror, related the vision of the past night, and begged that they might retire from Glengyle at once, as his soul was filled with dismay.
Rob, though deeming the whole affair a dream, as it was no doubt, felt somewhat disturbed by the story; for MacAleister maintained that it was a warning of his last hour being at hand; and still on his pale, blanched face he seemed to feel the icy breath of the phantom MacLaren.
Rob was too deeply imbued with the superstition of his time and country not to feel unpleasantly impressed by the whole affair, and fearing that something might be wrong at Portnellan, or that his presence there might be necessary, he and his follower set forth at once from the tower of Glengyle.
They proceeded quickly down the valley, passing through a dense old wood, which had grown there for ages.
In this wood was a clear and silvery fountain, which flowed into a tributary of Loch Katrine, and near it stood a little stone cross, covered with green moss and grey lichens. It had a great reputation for sanctity, and though frequently removed and cast elsewhere by the Presbyterians, by some means it always found its way back to the well, which was said to have been haunted of old by a beautiful fairy, with long flowing golden hair and shining garments—a water spirit like the Undine of the German romance.
Seeking the old fountain, Rob took a long draught of its pure cool stream, and drew aside a little way while MacAleister took off his bonnet and proceeded to say a prayer, for the adventure of the past night pressed heavy on his heart: but he had only uttered a single sentence, when he started back in terror, exclaiming that the pale grey face of MacLaren appeared under the water of the well, with the old malignant smile on his lips and in his eyes.
"Your dreams have bewildered you, Callam," said Rob Roy; "take courage—anon you will forget them."
But he had scarcely spoken, when there was a shout that woke every echo in the wood, and bursting through the trees and bushes about twenty dismounted troopers fell upon them, sword and carbine in hand.
MacGregor's claymore flashed from its sheath in a moment; and opposing his shield to them, he was about to break through and escape, when six levelled their carbines, and Colonel Grahame called upon him to "surrender, or he would be shot down without mercy!"
"I know how to die, but not how to yield," replied MacGregor, proudly.
"Then die in your obstinacy!" exclaimed the colonel; "fire!"
But the troopers paused, on which the faithful MacAleister exclaimed to his foster-brother in Gaelic.
"Let them fire atme, and when their guns are empty do thou break through, thou who wert nursed at my mother's breast—and God speed!"
With these words MacAleister threw himself, sword in hand, upon the troopers, who fired their carbines, and, pierced by four bullets, the devoted foster-brother of Rob Roy fell dead on the grass!
The heart of the latter was wrung within him on witnessing this sad catastrophe, and instead of flinging himself with fury on the soldiers and breaking away, as his foster-brother had expected, and had exhorted him to do, he stood for a minute with irresolution, gazing at the corpse, from which the blood was yet welling, with rage and sadness on his face and in his soul.
That minute of irresolution and grief lost all!
From every quarter of the wood, soldiers whom the firing had summoned, came hurrying in, and hemmed round on every side by swords, by levelled bayonets, halberts, and clubbed carbines, Rob Roy was beaten to the ground, and when well-nigh senseless was disarmed and bound with strong ropes, as if he had been a madman or a wild animal.
Then, on being dragged to his feet, he found himself the prisoner of the Duke of Montrose, who surveyed him with a fierce and exulting expression in his proud and haughty face.
"Oh!" exclaimed MacGregor, with a groan, "oh, eternal infamy! a prisoner, and Montrose—to thee!"
The duke wore a blue coat, faced and cuffed with scarlet, richly braided on the breast with broad bars of gold lace. Save at the throat, it was unbuttoned, and thus displayed a cuirass and gorget, both of the finest steel, which he wore in lieu of a vest, and over which fell the ends of his long cravat of Mechlin lace. He had on a three-cornered hat, a flowing white periwig, and black jackboots with gold spurs; and a sword and a brace of silver-mounted pistols hung at his waistbelt.
By his side were Colonel Grahame, Quartermaster Stewart, and others; for his grace had come hastily into the mountains with three hundred men, to reinforce the party from which Rob had escaped so successfully at Crianlarich.
"At last, MacGregor Campbell," said the duke, through his clenched teeth, while his eyes sparkled with triumph and resentment; "AT LAST you are in my power, and your doom hangs upon my lips!"
MacGregor uttered a scornful laugh, and though his hands were bound behind him, he drew his sturdy figure proudly up to its full height and measured the duke with a provoking glance of profound disdain—viewing him deliberately from head to foot.
"Now, my bold reiver, what have you to say?"
"For myself, my lord duke?"
"Yes," said Montrose, fiercely.
"Simply, that by fraud and force you have won a poor victory over a single man.Usethat victory as you please, Montrose, butabuseit not."
"Nay, nay, I shall use it justly, as I am entitled to do; for you know that you have long been a doomed felon, on whose head a price has been set."
"By whom?" asked MacGregor, disdainfully.
"The king and government."
"A German usurper and Scottish traitors like yourself!" replied the other furiously.
"Ha!—it matters not how you name them; you are nevertheless a foredoomed felon, and as such shall you die!"
"And who caused me to be stigmatized as such—who but you? Silence! Duke of Montrose, and lead me where you will; but be silent, I say. Honour is like fine steel—breathe upon it and the surface becomes stained. Sorely have you striven to stain the honour of Rob Roy; but you have striven in vain; for Rob will be remembered among these green mountains and in the hearts of the Gael—look down, O Heaven, and bless them!—when you, duke so venal and corrupt, will be remembered only as the enemy and oppressor of him you would destroy."
"Egad, I like your spirit, MacGregor!" said Colonel Grahame, as he sheathed his sword with an emphatic jerk.
"My spirit may break, Colonel Grahame, but never shall it bend," replied Rob Roy; "I may have my faults like other men, but if the best of us had these written on his forehead, he would, as the saw hath it, pull his bonnet well over his eyes. Till your chief made himself my enemy, I was a quiet, a peaceful, and a God-fearing man; but he made desolate my hearth and home; he seized my patrimony, and cast me forth into the world a broken man, an outlaw, and a beggar, with a price upon my head, to be hunted like a wild beast by soldiers and militia, horse and foot—I, a Highland gentleman, whose lineage was equal, if not superior to his own. But as Fingal said to Swaran, 'The desert is enough for me, with all its deer and echoing woods!' so I took my target and claymore, and retired to the steep mountain and the wild forest, with my good wife and my little ones. Since then, all we have endured has been enough to summon all the spirits of the Clan Alpine who have suffered and died since the field of Glenfruin, back from blessed heaven to the vengeance of earth!"
"Let their spirits come," said the duke, with fierce irony; "see if they will avail much, when you swing by the neck in the Broad Wynd of Stirling, even as Alaster of Glenstrae swung after his fine day's work at Glenfruin."
"We are not yet in the Broad Wynd of Stirling," said Rob, confidently; "but set me free for five minutes—put my broadsword in my hand, and here, on this plot of grass, will I fight you face to face and foot to foot—ay, with three of your best men, if you choose."
"I do not fight with felons," replied Montrose, loftily.
"Will you not meet me like a brave,—I cannot call you an honest, man?"
"I do not fight with felons," was again the cutting reply.
MacGregor crimsoned with passion, and exclaimed hoarsely,—"Woe to you, dastard duke! Alas, that I should ever speak thus to one who bears the good name that was borne by the Great Marquis, the gallant Dundee!"
"Enough of this," said the duke, also becoming red and husky with passion. "To horse, gentlemen, and away for Stirling. Colonel Grahame, bind the villain to one in whom you can place implicit trust, and let him be well watched. The man who permits him to escape, I will pistol with my own hand!"
MacGregor was secured to a horse behind a trooper, whose waistbelt was passed through the belt from which his sword and pistols were taken; his hands were also tied behind, so that it was impossible for him either to slip or leap off; and in this ignominious fashion, escorted by nearly four hundred of the duke's local militia, horse and foot, he was carried away a prisoner.
As they departed from the Haunted Well, he gazed sadly at the stiffened corpse of his faithful friend and foster-brother, Callam, son of the arrow-maker,—one who had never failed him in many an hour of peril, and whose remains were left where he fell, and where a cairn now marks his grave.
The captors had to travel with great secrecy, lest the country people should rise to the rescue of Rob Roy; but with all their speed the journey of twenty miles towards the banks of the Forth occupied the whole day, so rough and roadless was the district through which they marched, down by Glenfinglas and Bochastle, through the pass of Leney and by the beautiful Braes of Callender; and many a wistful glance their unfortunate prisoner cast back to the mountains; for they looked down on his secluded home, where his wife and children dwelt, and where ere long they would be bewailing him in hopeless sorrow.
In his exultation at having personally made captive a prisoner so important to the State, and for whose seizure a reward had been so long offered, as a rebel, traitor, outlaw, and robber, the Duke of Montrose ordered his trumpets to play and his kettledrummers to beat, when the smoke, the steep ridge, the castled rock, and grey old walls of Stirling appeared in the distance rising amid the green and lovely valley of the Forth.
MacGregor gazed sullenly and fiercely at the distant fortress, wherein, for a brief time, he would be a prisoner, if he could not escape by the way.
They had now crossed Lanrick Mead and the green Braes of Doune, and before them lay the long snaky windings of the Forth, which the duke ordered his troopers to pass by the Fords of Frew—those deep and treacherous fords which Rob knew so well that, as history tells us, and as already related, he guided the army of Mar through them after the battle of Sheriffmuir.
As they drew near the river, the duke, for the greater security of his prisoner, ordered him to be bound anew with a horse-girth to Quartermaster James Stewart, one of the most powerful and resolute of his followers, adding, as he saw the buckle secured under his own eye,—
"And you shall keep him company thus until we have him in the care of the captain of Stirling Castle, or the goodman of the Tolbooth."
Stewart evinced some repugnance to this mode of conducting the prisoner, for the latter and he were old acquaintances, who had frequently trafficked in cattle in more peaceful and happy times.
Rob submitted in silence to this new arrangement; again the brass trumpets sounded shrilly, and the kettledrums rang, as the horse began their march towards the fords; but Rob heeded little this display of pride and triumph, for all his thoughts were elsewhere,—at the fireside of Portnellan, with his aged mother, his wife, and children.
Again a prisoner! Oh, how his brave heart yearned for them, and trembled for their future, all the more that now the faithful and unflinching MacAleister was gone.
Coll was now a man, strong, brave, and active; but had he sufficient skill or strategy to maintain with success the desperate career which his father might bequeath to him from the scaffold at Stirling?
And then there were Duncan and Hamish, with little Ronald, who was always in scrapes and turmoils, and exhibited more scars and bruises than even Greumoch, or the most veteran of the clan, what might their fate—their future be?
Their ruddy sunburnt faces, their hearty boyish voices, all came vividly to memory with the terrible question,—How were their lives to end?
By a tender succession of links in his boys, he had beheld a future lifebeyondhis own; for by the natural course of events they were to see what he could never hope to see, or feel, or share in—the coming time, which they were to enjoy (or endure) when his strong hand was lying in the grave, when his sword had returned to the anvil, and when on earth he could avail them no more. But what an heritage of danger had he to bequeath them!
Then the future plans of the Jacobites (with whose success he identified the restoration of his people to their own name, and of his patrimony to himself) came before him, for he was deeply involved in their intrigues; and about the very time of this most unexpected capture he was to have met a messenger from the Marquis of Seaforth, as that noble was styled by the loyalists in Scotland—a messenger who was to precede an invasion of the Highlands from Spain.
Twilight stole over the scenery. The eagle had gone to its eyry in the rocks; the lazy cormorant and the long-legged heron had forsaken the shore, and all was silent, or nearly so, for no sound broke the stillness now, save the tramp of the horses, or at times a loud shriek that rung upon the wind, and wailed away in the distance.
It was the melancholy cry of the night-owl.
Darkness had set in when the leading files of the duke's column began with great deliberation and care to cross the Forth at Frew. Recent rains had swollen the river, which made a brawling sound at the fords, though it usually rolls silently and even somewhat sluggishly through its lovely valley, a winding course of ninety miles towards the sea.
While the centre and rear of the horsemen were halted by the margin of the river, the others crossed, half-fording and half-swimming, and thereafter scrambling up the rugged bank on the opposite side, Rob Roy began to converse in low tones with the quartermaster, James Stewart.
The grandson of the latter was some years ago an innkeeper at Loch Katrine, and a guide to tourists; and it was to his relation of this adventure that Sir Walter Scott was indebted for one of the most stirring passages in his novel, wherein, however, he designates the trooper to whom Rob was bound "Evan of the Brigglands."
Taking advantage of the darkness, the splashing, the shouting, and noise as the troopers crossed cautiously by two at a time, Rob implored Stewart, "by all the ties of old acquaintance, of common humanity, and good neighbourhood, to give him some chance of escape from an assured doom—a death of ignominy."
For some time Stewart heard him unmoved, till MacGregor began to remind him that a day of terrible vengeance would assuredly come anon, as he would leave to his sons and followers the task of destroying all who were in any way accessory to his capture and execution.
Stewart knew too well what the MacGregors were capable of attempting and performing, to hear this without alarm, or to consider it an empty threat; and to some emotions of compassion for Rob as an old friend, and a sorely wronged and oppressed man, were now added those of fear for himself and his possessions.
He made no reply; but when the voice of the duke was heard, as he called from the opposite bank to bring over the prisoner, the quartermaster guided his horse down the bank, and entered the dark stream, which, with a loud rushing sound, was flowing rapidly past.
Overhead the stars shone clearly and coldly, yet the river and its wooded banks were involved in gloom and obscurity; and when in the middle of the stream, the quartermaster reined in his horse, as if uncertain of its footing.
At that moment MacGregor felt the girth which secured them together relaxed, as the buckle was parted, and the cord which bound his wrists was cut, by the friendly hand of Stewart.
"'Tis well," he whispered, as he pressed the latter's hand; "you will never repent the deed of to-night—never, if you live for a thousand years!"
Slipping over the crupper of the horse, he dived into the river, and swam under its surface for some yards, till he could emerge with safety under the shade of a clump of willows, where he crept ashore, quietly and unseen, exactly as described in the splendid novel which bears his name.
On Stewart ascending the opposite bank, where the horsemen were getting into their ranks, and forming in order under Colonel Grahame, the duke instantly missed Rob Roy.
"Villain!" he exclaimed, "where is your prisoner?"
Stewart began to falter out something by way of explanation or excuse, when the duke, blind with rage and fury, drew a long horse-pistol from his holsters, and dealt him a blow on the head with the steel butt—a blow from the effects of which his descendant (the innkeeper) said he never recovered.
Carbines were now discharged up and down the stream, flashing in the darkness and waking the echoes of the rocks. A close search was made on both banks by troopers on horse and foot, but vainly, till day broke, for no trace could be discerned of the fugitive, who knew the country better than his pursuers, and by that time had reached in safety the hill of Vaigh-mhor, amid the rocks of which is a secret cavern, the haunt of outlaws and robbers so lately as 1750.
There he lurked in safety until nightfall, after which he proceeded with all speed back to the banks of Loch Katrine, and reached his household at Portnellan, where his family were in despair, and where Greumoch, his future henchman, was arraying five hundred men, for the purpose of falling down into Stirlingshire to rescue or revenge him.
But now a messenger arrived who warned them that their swords were required for another purpose, a third rising in the Highlands for King James VIII., as he was named by the Scottish cavaliers.
The preceding chapters of our story will in some degree have illustrated to the reader the peculiar character, habits, and manner of the Scottish Highlanders, and have shown how different they were in many respects from their Lowland countrymen.
"The ideas and employments which their seclusion from the world rendered habitual," says General Stewart of Garth, "the familiar contemplation of the most sublime objects of nature—the habit of concentrating their affections within the narrow precincts of their own glens, or the limited circle of their own kinsmen—and the necessity of union and self-dependence in all difficulties and dangers, combined to form a peculiar and original character. A certain romantic sentiment, the offspring of deep and cherished feeling, strong attachment to country and kindred, and a consequent disdain of submission to strangers, formed the character of independence; while an habitual contempt of danger was nourished by their solitary musings, of which the honour of their clan, and a long descent from brave and warlike ancestors, formed the theme.
"Thus their exercises, their amusements, their mode of subsistence, their motives of action, their prejudices and their superstitions became characteristic, permanent, and peculiar. Firmness and decision, fertility in resources, ardour in friendship, and a generous enthusiasm were the result of such modes of life and such habits of thought. Feeling themselves separated by nature from the rest of mankind, and distinguished by their language, their habits, their manners, and their dress, they considered themselves the original possessors of the country, and regarded the Saxons of the Lowlands as strangers and intruders."
But to resume:—
The messenger who reached Portnellan was no other than Sir James Livingstone, whom Rob had encountered after the devastation of Kippen, and who had now changed sides and become a Jacobite in sheer disgust of the atrocities of the Ministry after the battle of Sheriffmuir.
From Seaforth, chief of the MacKenzies, he bore a letter to Rob Roy, stating that he intended to rise in arms for the king, and desired the aid and assistance of the Clan Alpine, when and where the bearer would inform him, as it was dangerous to commit his plans to paper.
The writer was William MacKenzie, Earl of Seaforth, whose father had been created a marquis by the exiled king.
"So, MacGregor, I have come at a fortunate time," said Sir James, as they walked in conference together by the shore of Loch Katrine; "your men I see are all in arms——"
"And prepared to do all that men can do," replied Rob; "but the Lowlands are full of troops, close up to the Highland border; now ships of war come at times even into the salt lochs of the Campbells, and so the Highlands are scarcely what they were when we were boys, Sir James."
"True; but one good battle may alter all that; and remember, Rob, that the Grampians are still theDorsum Britanniae."
"The what?" said MacGregor, with perplexity.
"The Backbone of Britain, as they were called of old by a Scottish Kuldee."
"Seaforth refers me to you for information; where is he now?"
"At Madrid."
"Madrid—oich; that is a long way from the Braes of Balquhidder!" said Rob, with fresh perplexity.
"At Madrid," repeated Livingstone, "where his Majesty James VIII. has been received with all the honours due to the King of Great Britain by Philip V., who is too good a monarch not to remember the claim of King James to our throne—a claim derived from Scripture, which says, 'The right of the first-born is his.'"
"But what help does the Spanish king offer the Blue Bonnets if they rise in arms?"
"Six thousand Spanish soldiers of the line, with twelve thousand stands of arms, are to be embarked on board of ten ships of war, under the command of the Irish Duke of Ormond."
"A brave man!" exclaimed Rob; "but where are these ships and Spaniards?"
"At San Sebastian and elsewhere. This armament will sail in the early part of next year for the Western Isles, and will probably arrive while yet the Highland passes are blocked up by snow. Seaforth doubts not that you will join him, and if possible make short work with the Munroes, the Rosses, and other Whig clans, who will be sure to break into Kintail on the first tidings that the Spanish keels have passed through the Sound of Slate. With these Spanish soldiers, and with these twelve thousand stands of arms, when distributed among the loyal clans, and with the aid expected from the Welsh and Irish, we may well hope, Rob, to crush both the English and the Lowlanders; and by this day twelvemonth we may see every head wearing its own bonnet, and the elector at home in Hernhausen."
All this sounded very well to Rob, who seldom required a great incentive to attempt anything desperate, especially against Highland Whigs, such as the Rosses, Munroes, or Grants; so he pledged himself "to meet the Marquis of Seaforth in Kintail in the spring of the following year, with at least four hundred good claymores;" and after spending a few days at Portnellan, Sir James Livingstone departed to visit some other Jacobite gentlemen, and seek their aid.
The Highland winter had now set in with its usual severity; the snow, which drifted deep in the passes, rendered Rob safe from all attacks at that time; so the days were occupied peacefully by his people in attending to their cattle, hunting deer, and collecting fuel; the evenings were spent with the harp and pipe, with sword play, or practice with the target and claymore, in dancing and athletic exercises; till the spring days came, and the ice began to melt in the deep lochs, and the snow to dissolve in runnels of water down the steep slopes of the mountains.
"The three Faoilteach have been as bad as the worst days of winter," said Rob, as he looked over the vast extent of hill and glen that lay round his home; "so, please God, we shall have fair spring weather, Helen, to meet Lord Seaforth in Kintail na Bogh."
It is a belief in the Highlands that if thefaoilteach, three days which January borrowed from February by the bribe of three young lambs, prove fair and pleasant, there will be bad and stormy weather throughout the ensuing year.
"I would you were safely back from Kintail," said Helen; "for danger, it may be death, are before you, Rob. Does not Paul Crubach say that he has had visions of grey warriors riding along the steepest cliffs of Craigrostan and Benvenue, where mortal horseman never rode, nor living horse could keep its footing?"
"Likely enough, good wife; for poor Paul sees that which others never see," said Rob, laughing.
And now on the 1st day of April, 1719, came a messenger from Sir James Livingstone, to state that the Spanish fleet had sailed for the Hebrides, and directing Rob to march for Glensheil with all the loyal and discontented Highlanders he could collect, and to halt near the head of Loch Hourn, till the Spaniards arrived.
"These Spaniards come from a land of wine and oranges," said Helen; "how will our long kail and oat cakes agree with their dainty stomachs?"
"Better than English bullets, Helen," said Rob.
When he departed with his followers from Portnellan he took with him the little English boy, Harry Huske, for he doubted not that after falling down into the Lowlands, or even before that time came to pass, there would be many encounters with the Government troops, and an opportunity must occur for restoring him to his father the major.
Helen MacGregor had become deeply attached to the child, who had many pretty and winning ways; thus she wept bitterly when he was taken from her, and is said to have repeated the ominous words of her former prediction, "that the boy was too fair and beautiful to find a place on earth."
Secretly though the messengers of Livingstone were despatched, the Government were on the alert, and had their troops in the field nearly as soon as the Jacobites, for so great was the terror in England of this Spanish invasion, that aid was sought as usual from Holland; and already six thousand Dutch infantry, with a great body of British troops, were on the march for Scotland.
At that period, the fighting force of the Highlands consisted of at least fifty thousand men; but so divided were the clans among themselves, that seldom more than five thousand men at a time came forth in any of the insurrections for the House of Stuart.
On this occasion Rob Roy had four hundred men with him, having left the rest at home under Coll and Red Alaster MacGregor, with orders to keep the pass of Loch Ard against any soldiers whom General Carpenter might send by that route to plunder or destroy.
It was on a lovely day in April when the MacGregors, after a march of more than eighty miles north-west across the mountains from Loch Katrine, guided by a wandering harper named Gillian Ross, from the Isle of the Pigmies, after skirting the vast waste of the braes of Rannoch and the hills of Glenorchy—by ascending the Devil's Staircase, and from thence, passing by the base of the snow-clad Ben Nevis, whose summit was hidden in masses of grey vapour, by Corpach (or the vale of the corpses), by Glen Arkaig and the head of Loch Hourn, halted on the hills of Glensheil, in sight of the dim and distant peaks of the Isle of Skye, and the waves of the Atlantic.
Along the base of the dark mountains which there start abruptly, like masses of blue rock, from the deep salt lochs of the west, wreaths of grey smoke were curling on the wind. These were from the fires of the busy burners of kelp—a manufacture the abolition of which, by the Parliament of 1823, brought ruin and famine upon the poor peasantry of Argyle and Ross.
The weather was mild and warm, though tempered by the breeze from the ocean. The MacGregors encamped on the sheltered side of a mountain slope; a stray cow or so, and the deer of the glens, supplied them with food, which they cooked in the old Scottish fashion, by boiling the flesh in its own skin, or broiling it in fires formed of roots from a morass, or dry branches from the nearest forest.
Every man carried his own oatmeal and hunting-bottle of usquebaugh; and other incumbrance or baggage they had none, save their arms and ammunition.
Little Harry Huske had become hardy now, and slept as snugly in the neuk of Rob's or Greumoch's plaid, as when at home in Portnellan, though he sometimes wept for his mother, as he had learned to call Helen MacGregor.
The third day had been passed on the mountains thus, when a gentleman in tartan trews, with a laced coat and periwig, was seen approaching the camp, mounted on a strong Highland garron.
He and his followers (he had four armed men with him, clad in Highland dresses of the MacKenzie tartan) wore in their bonnets the white cockade, the forbidden badge of the House of Stuart; consequently they were received with acclamations by the MacGregors, though one of the visitors was no other than the redoubtable Duncan nan Creagh, now somewhat bent and older than when we first introduced him to the reader, but active, fierce, and resolute as ever.
On this occasion he acted as guide to Sir James Livingstone, the mounted man in trews.
"Welcome, Sir James," said Rob Roy; "I trust you bring us good tidings of the king and his adherents."
"Would to heaven I could do so," replied the baronet, with unconcealed dejection.
"How?" asked the other, with alarm.
"The fleet, with all the Spanish troops and munitions of war, set sail from San Sebastian for Scotland; but Heaven itself seems against this most unlucky House of Stuart."
"Sir James Livingstone!"
"It is so; for Fortune and the elements are alike their enemies!" exclaimed the other, bitterly.
"Speak quickly, Sir James," said MacGregor, stamping his foot on the heather; "I am in no mode either for parables or riddles, after marching all this distance, and leaving my family and my country all but open to the enemy; and I know the tricks that Montrose and Killearn are capable of playing me. The fleet, you say, has sailed?"
"But encountered a dreadful gale off Cape Finisterre——"
"I know not where that may be."
"'Tis a headland off the coast of Brittany—where, it matters not; but the storm lasted two entire days, and drove the armament back, dismasted and battered, to the Spanish coast, thus disconcerting all the plans of the Duke of Ormond and the friendly schemes of Philip V."
"Then we have marched here in vain!"
Sir James nodded his head sadly in assent.
"Has not a single vessel reached the Western Isles?"
"Yes; two frigates—only two—under the Spanish flag are now anchored at Stornoway, in the Lewis, where they have landed the Marquis of Tullybardine——"
"Tullybardine!" repeated Rob, with knitted brow. "I remember him, a fair-haired youth, at the castle of Blair, when his father, Duke John of Athole, laid a black snare for me."
"Think not of that now, MacGregor," said Livingstone, earnestly; "he is young and brave, and steadfast to our king."
"Who more?"
"The Lords Seaforth and Marischal, with some arms."
"How many?"
"Two thousand stands of muskets, and five thousand pistols. And there are three hundred Spanish soldiers."
"Any money?" asked Rob, quickly.
"Yes, some treasure in care of Don José de Santarem, a Knight of Malta."
"Dioul!" said Rob, waving his bonnet; "matters are not so bad after all. We are in for it now, and must play out the game. We cannot disperse without fighting somebody, were it but to save from distress the strangers who have come so far to serve our exiled king."
"Yes," added Sir James, bitterly; "and we have to save our own necks from the gallows."
"Are we to seize birlinns, and cross to the Lewis?"
"No. In a few days Seaforth will unfurl the Caberfeidh,* and come hither with all his men; and to you his wishes are, that you shall keep the pass of Strachells against all who approach it from the east or south until he arrives in Glensheil. The Rosses and Munroes are already in arms for the elector."
* A famous banner of the MacKenzies.
"Let us cut the traitors to pieces," said Rob, "and then the loyal and the timid alike will join us from all quarters."
In obedience to his instructions, Rob marched to the narrow pass which is in the highest part of the district of Glensheil, orsheilig(the Vale of Hunting), that lies between the great forests of Seaforth and Glengarry; but so long were the delays that the snow had disappeared from the loftiest mountains, and the swallow and cuckoo had come to the woods of evergreen pine and feathery birch, ere the Spanish soldiers with the MacKenzies and the wild MacRaes reached the camp of the MacGregors.
Leaving Stornoway, in the Isle of Lewis, they crossed to the mainland, and fortifying the mouth of Loch Duich, took possession of Eilan Donan, a castle of the MacKenzies, and placed cannon on it.
Meanwhile, General Joseph Wightman, an active and resolute officer, was pushing on through the mountains from Inverness with a mixed force, consisting of several companies of the 11th, 14th, and 15th Regiments (then known respectively as Montague's Devonshire, Clayton's Bedfordshire, and Harrison's Yorkshire), and two thousand Dutch auxiliaries, with whom also came the Rosses, the Munroes, and other clans who adhered to the House of Guelph.
Huske was the brigade-major.
Marching with all speed by paths that were wild and rugged, the old Fingalian war-paths, or tracks by which the cattle were driven, on the 9th of June the troops of General Wightman came within ten miles of the camp of Seaforth, when a halt was ordered just as the sun was setting amid that solemn scenery, where a deep and secluded arm of the sea penetrates among the hills of Glensheil.
"Major Huske," said General Wightman, as the wearied troops piled their arms, posted sentinels, and prepared to cook some venison which had been shot for them by the Munroes of Culcairn, "with an officer and a hundred men of Montague's as an advanced guard, or rather as an outlying picket, you will march one mile further on, and see them properly posted. Reconnoitre well before you halt, and if aught can be seen of the enemy send back a messenger to me."
"For further instructions?"
"Yes. Look well about you; for the notorious and desperate outlaw, Robert MacGregor, or Campbell, who has been in arms against the Government ever since the Revolution, is among these rebels, and may give us more trouble with twelve men than Lord Seaforth could with so many hundreds."
"Rob Roy!" exclaimed Huske, starting.
"Egad, yes; Rob himself," said the general, dismounting. "You seem surprised, major. Did he give you so great a fright when he beat up your quarters at Inversnaid?"
"Do not mistake me, General Wightman," replied Huske, with an air of severity. "It was but the start of an almost savage joy which I experienced, on hearing that I was to have again opposed to me the man to whom I owe the infliction of a terrible grief—the loss of my son Harry, my poor little motherless boy!"
"Oh, your son—yes," said the general, in an altered voice; "I heard that he perished unhappily—in the daring night attack on Inversnaid."
"Yes; and I would rather that he had perished when his mother did at Landau, than in the hands of those half-naked Highland savages."
"Landau! Zounds, major, I remember that unfortunate affair too, for my tent was near yours, on the left of the lines. You remember our brigade was posted near the river Zurich?"
"But if I am spared to meet these MacGregors again I may teach this Rob Roy to feel something of the torture I now feel; for two of his sons, I have been told, are among his followers, and if one of them fall into my hands again——"
"Well, do as you please, major, with Rob Roy and his sons; but beware of ambuscades like that into which he lured Clifford and poor Dorrington, at Aberfoyle. And now move to the front, if you please. Keep the picket under arms, and throw out a line of double sentinels towards the pass in the mountains."
In obedience to this order Major Huske marched a hundred men of Montague's Regiment to the distance of one mile from the main body, and halting them among some wild whins for concealment, with orders to remain accoutred, threw forward a chain of sentinels, whom he posted in person, in such places as he thought they could best observe the approach of the enemy, and communicate with each other, or with the picket in their rear.
After this, as the night was clear and beautiful, he walked a little way beyond them, to reconnoitre and observe the country.
The scenery was wild in the extreme. On one side of a narrow inlet rose a tall cliff, where the black iolar built his nest; at its base lay the still water of the sea, where, in moonshine and sunshine alike, the round black heads of the sea-dogs (whom the Celts supposed to be fairies) were visible, as they swam to and fro, fixing their dark and melancholy eyes on the twinkling stars or the passing boats.
On the other side of the inlet rose an ancient barrow or burial mound, from which, as the peasantry averred, strange gleams of lustre came at night, with sweet melodious sounds.
The place was said to be enchanted, for any person who sat thereon and spoke aloud heard whatever they said repeated thrice. Then it was the fairies or the devil who replied; now it is only the echo—the son of the lonely rock.
Huske was now nearly half a mile from his sentinels; but in the clear summer twilight he could see their figures distinctly, with their dark grey coats and white leggings; and then he thought of returning, when an armed Highlander, who had been crouching among the heather, rose up suddenly as an apparition, to bar his way.
His round shield was braced upon his left arm, and his drawn claymore was glittering in his right hand.
Major Huske laid his hand on his sword, and stepping forward a pace or two resolutely, found himself face to face with—ROB ROY!
For a moment Rob, who had been scouting or reconnoitring in person by the Earl of Seaforth's request, surveyed the major with evident doubt and irresolution expressed in his sunburnt face, for this was the hour when, as the Celts suppose, the spirits of evil are abroad, and when wraiths and demons of the air may assume the forms of human beings at will; while, on the other hand, Huske, to whom no such absurd idea occurred, and who had just reason to respect and fear Rob's personal strength, thrust his cocked-hat firmly upon his head, and surveyed his foe, with fury and hatred sparkling in his sombre eyes.
"So, villain!" he exclaimed, "we are fated to meet again!"
"Beware how we part, if this is to be the style of our conversation!" replied MacGregor, sternly.
"Fellow, are you so ignorant, or so stupid, as to be unaware that by uttering a shout or firing this pistol I can have you surrounded, and hanged or shot, in three minutes?"
"Then, beware, Major Huske, how you fire the shot or utter the shout; for ere you finished either, my father's sword would clatter in your breast-bone," replied the other, quietly.
"Defend yourself, then, traitor though you be!" said Huske, drawing a pistol from his girdle and cocking it.
"I am no traitor," retorted MacGregor, proudly, "for I never owned as king the German prince you serve, but am the liegeman of James VIII., whose enemies may God confound! Moreover, I have no wish to encounter you again, Major Huske—at least, until this child, which has been long my peculiar care, is in a place of safety." As he spoke he pointed to a boy, who was no other than little Harry, the child taken at Inversnaid, and who was sound asleep on the soft heather, with Rob's tartan plaid wrapped round him.
"Right," said Huske, hoarsely; "my time for retribution has come; this child shall go before the Highland dog his father!"
Levelling his pistol in an instant, and before MacGregor could interpose, the major shot the sleeping child through the body. There was a convulsive gasp, a shudder under the tartan plaid, and all was over! "Unfortunate wretch—oh, mistaken coward!" exclaimed Rob Roy, in a piercing voice. "Major Huske, by Heaven and St. Mary, you have destroyed your own son!"
"How—how?" cried Huske, wildly; for the solemn and excited manner of MacGregor impressed him with a terrible conviction of truth; "my son, say you—my son?"
"I have spoken but too truly," said the Highlander, while, heedless of what Huske might do with sword or pistol, he knelt, with a sob in his throat, and unfolding the bloody plaid, showed to the horror-stricken officer the dead body of a little golden-haired boy, whose features he could not fail to recognize.
He covered his face with his hands, exclaiming—
"Oh, MacGregor, what dreadful deed is this I have done?"
There was a long pause, and then Rob said—
"My people found your son asleep in his little bed at Inversnaid, and carefully preserved him until such time as he could be restored to you, his father, or friends. Hunted and proscribed as we are, treated by such as you like wolves or other wild beasts, a hundred difficulties were in the way of having the child thus restored; and the poor little fellow learned to love us, to be the playmate of my children, the sharer of our humble hearth and frugal board, while my good and gentle wife, who knew that the boy was motherless, nurtured him tenderly. Being certain that you would be with the army sent against Seaforth and the Spaniards, I brought hither the child that we might restore him, in the hope that for the good deed we had done you might allow, as we say in Scotland, bygones between us to be bygones; but, alas! this is the restoration that Helen's heart foreboded!"
"How, Macgregor?"
"When she predicted so often that the child was too sweet in temper and too fair in form to find a place on earth; and now, woe worth the hour! he has been sent by his father's hand to Heaven, from whence he came!"
When MacGregor ceased, Huske had cast himself on his knees among the heather, cowering down, in wretchedness, with his face buried in his hands, and sobbing heavily; while the former covered up the little body, tenderly and gently, in his plaid, lest the sight of its blood should too much shock the murderer.
"Go, Major Huske,—return to your men," said he, laying a hand kindly on the shoulder of the officer; "my hand can never inflict on you a deeper wound than your own has done. From my soul I pity you! When seeking to wrong me—wrong me cruelly and foully—you have destroyed your fair little boy, whom I was learning to love as if he had been my own; but," added Rob, taking off his bonnet and pointing upward, "his pure spirit is among the flowers that the angels will gather at the foot of His throne who is above us."
"Oh, MacGregor," groaned Huske, "end, I pray you, my existence!"
"That I may not do; and I pray you to avoid me when next we meet."
"Where?" asked Huske, incoherently.
"Where the angel of death is hovering—on the hills of Glensheil," replied Rob Roy, as he sprang up some rocks that were close by and disappeared; for at that moment an officer named Captain Dawnes, who had heard the explosion of the pistol, came hurriedly up with some twenty men of the picket, all with their bayonets fixed.
By sunrise on the 10th of June, the shrill pipes playing "Tulloch Ard" (the gathering and war-cry of the MacKenzies) rang in Glensheil, the dwelling place of the wild MacRaes, as the British redcoats, and the Dutch in yellow uniforms, were seen to enter that beautiful valley, which is fifteen miles in length, forming line by regiments as they advanced into the open space.
The Marquises of Seaforth and Tullybardine, as the loyalists termed both, with Rob Roy, took up a position at the narrow pass of Strachells, the highest part of Glensheil. With them was an expatriated chieftain, Campbell of Glendaruail—a place which means the Vale of Red Blood, where Magnus, King of Norway, perished with his army in defeat.
The first troops that appeared were Harrison's Foot, a wing of the 15th Regiment, which thirty years before fought against Viscount Dundee at the battle of Killycrankie. They had philemot yellow facings, and coats elaborately laced with white braid.
On their left were some of the clans who were adverse to the House of Stuart, the Munroes in gay scarlet tartans, the Rosses, Sutherlands, and others, whose appearance in the ranks of the enemy filled the insurgent Highlanders with rage; and in front of the Rosses marched a tall grey-bearded harper, playing on his harp. This was Gillian Ross, who had guided the MacGregors to Glensheil; and Rob Roy vowed, if he came within arm's length of him, to "tear his chords asunder."
The other corps came up in succession, and gradually formed across the valley, the Grenadiers marching in front of the line, with their pouches open and fuses lighted.
General Wightman, a Dutch colonel named Van Rasmusson, and Major Huske alone were mounted.
Seaforth's men, including the MacRaes, under Duncan nan Creagh, were about a thousand strong, and all armed in the usual Highland fashion. On their left were six companies of Spanish Infantry under Colonel Don Alonzo de Santarem, and his brother Don José, a Knight of Malta. A quarter of a mile eastward on their left flank were posted the MacGregors under Rob Roy, whose orders were to make an attack upon the enemy in flank.
On perceiving how the insurgents were posted, and that they had formed a breastwork (which still remains) to protect the pass, Wightman sent forward a line of skirmishers, who were completely exposed to the long muskets and deadly aim of the Highland marksmen. Thus, during the sharpshooting only one MacKenzie fell, while Huske's horse was shot under him, and many soldiers of the line were killed and wounded.
Here the clan of Munro, becoming impatient, made a rush forward, but were driven back by the MacKenzies and Spaniards, and their leader, George Munro of Culcairn, fell severely wounded. As the Spaniards continued to fire at or over him, while he lay on the ground, he said to his servant, who was also his foster-brother, and who lingered affectionately beside him,—
"Retire; leave me to my fate; but say to my father that I died here with honour, and as became the race we spring from."
"Never," replied the other, bursting into tears; "how can you suppose that I would forsake you now? No, no, George Munro; I will save you if I can, or remain and die with you!"
He then spread himself and his plaid over the body of Culcairn, to interrupt the balls of the Spaniards, and received several severe wounds before they were both rescued and dragged off the field by a sergeant of the Munroes, who had sworn upon his dirk—the Holy Iron—to accomplish the deliverance of his leader.
Prior to this, the MacGregors had been—repulsed!
"Rob Roy," says the new statistical account of Scotland, "acted with more zeal than judgment by attacking therearof the enemy, before their front became engaged."
On seeing the steady array of red and yellow uniforms advancing, the impetuosity of his men could no longer be restrained by the same rules of discipline which ordered Don Alonzo and his six companies of Spaniards.
"Strike up, Alpine!" cried Rob to his piper; "fall on, my lads, and cleave them down as a boy would cleave the thistles!"
Then in the usual Highland fashion, the whole tribe came down like a living flood upon the foe, with their uplifted swords flashing in the sunshine. An officer thus describes thefinemotions of a Highlander when charging:—"His first motion when descending to battle was to place his bonnet firmly on his head by an emphaticscrug; his second, to cast off his plaid; his third, to incline his body horizontally forward, cover it with his target, rush to within fifty paces of the enemy's line, discharge and drop his fusee or rifle; his fourth, to dart within twelve paces, discharge and fling his iron-stocked pistols at the foeman's head; his fifth, to draw claymore and at him!"
The MacGregors wheeled round in a half circle, fired their muskets and pistols, and then fell on the rear of the Dutch and 15th, who faced about and received them on their bayonets, while some companies of the second line opened an oblique fire which drove them back in rout and confusion; not, however, until Rob had actually his hand upon a regimental colour, after which, closing up hand to hand with the Dutch colonel, Van Rasmusson, he unhorsed and slew him. Dawnes, a captain of the 15th, came rushing to the rescue of the Dutchman; but a pistol-shot broke the blade of his sword near the hilt just as Rob was closing on him.
"Pass on," said MacGregor, nobly, as he saluted with his sword the defenceless officer, who almost immediately after was killed by a stray bullet.
Driven up the hill in confusion and rage, the MacGregors now joined the MacKenzies and MacRaes in defence of the pass; but previous to this, a young clansman named Eoin MacPhadrig (John, son of Patrick MacGregor) rushed back furiously among the Dutch like a tiger, and slew five of them before he was bayoneted and killed. With a thousand reverberations the steep hills echoed the reports of the firearms, the cries of the wounded, and the cheers of the combatants, as the lines drew closer.
General Wightman now recalled his skirmishers, and ordered the Grenadiers to advance. They did so, blowing their matches and throwing their hand-grenades as fast as possible. By the bursting of these, several Highlanders were wounded, and Lord Seaforth fell severely injured by a splinter, while to add still more to the confusion and sufferings of the wounded, the heather, which was dry as tinder, soft, and deeply rooted, caught fire by these explosions, and now sheets of flame rolled up the mountain sides, with clouds of murky smoke.
Under cover of this the British and Dutch infantry made no less than three desperate attacks upon the insurgents, but were repulsed, and, after a three hours' engagement, these combined forces had to retire, leaving the Highlanders in complete possession of the pass, where, according to Wightman's despatch, lay one hundred and forty-two of his soldiers, killed and wounded.*
* Captain Dawnes and two lieutenants of the 15th were killed; Captains Moore and Heighington of the 14th were wounded; Culcairn's thigh was broken.
Next day, seeing the utter futility of further resistance, Don Alonzo, whose Spaniards were naturally cold and indifferent to the cause, and who had suffered in the conflict, surrendered the survivors, two hundred and seventy-four in number, to Major Huske, as prisoners of war.
On this the MacKenzies and MacRaes dispersed to places where none could follow them; and Wightman began his retreat for Edinburgh, a march of more than a hundred and fifty miles.
The Marquis of Tullybardine, the Earls Marischal and Seaforth, and Sir James Livingstone, after long concealment, and though £2,000 were offered for each of their heads, escaped and reached the Continent in safety; and thus ended, says Salmon, "this mighty Spanish invasion, which had so much alarmed the three kingdoms." Traces of this conflict are still to be seen. Gun-barrels and bullets are found in the valley, and especially behind the manse of Glensheil, where the Spaniards, before surrendering, blew up their magazine; and there is yet shown the green grave of the Dutch colonel, Van Rasmusson, who fell by the hand of Rob Roy, near the small cascade which flows into the glen.