Three months after Louis landed in America, he died of a broken heart say some; of the marsh fever say others. He was then on the march with a detachment of ours up the Mississippi, a long route of 1500 miles, to take possession of Fort Charters in the Illinois. His friend, a Captain Grant—Alaster the One-handed—performed the last offices for him, and saw him rolled in a blanket, and buried at the foot of a cotton-tree, where the muskets of the Black Watch made the echoes of the vast prairie ring as they poured three farewell volleys over the last home of a brave but lonely heart.
IV.
THE MASSACRE AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY.
When the Black Watch sailed for America, in 1706, to serve under the heroic Wolfe and fight against the Marquis of Montcalm, the lieutenant of the 7th company was Roderick MacGillivray, known in the ranks by his local patronymic, Roderick Ruadh (or the Red) of Glenarrow, a gentleman of the Clan Chattan, who, eleven years before, had been a captain in the army of Prince Charles Edward, and had served throughout the memorable campaign of 1745-6. In his heart Roderick MacGillivray had no love either for the service or sovereign of Britain, whom he considered as the butcher of his countrymen, and the usurper of their crown; but his estate of Glenarrow had been forfeited; he was penniless, and having a young wife to maintain, he was glad to accept a commission in the Royal Highlanders—a favour he procured through the interest of one who has already been mentioned in these pages, Louis Charters, who served at Fort du Quesne, as already related in the legend of the "Lost Regiment."
In those days there were many soldiers in the ranks of our regiment who had served in the army of Prince Charles, and who deemed his father, James VIII., the undoubted sovereign of these realms, by that hereditary right, which, as their Celtic proverb has it, "will face the rocks," and which they deemed as sacred and immutable as if the breath of God had ordained it. Thus they served George II., not because they wavered in their loyalty to their native kings, but because they hated his enemies the French, whom they knew to have betrayed the cause of the clans, and in the hope that a time would yet come when the standard which Tullybardine, the loyal and true, unfurled in Glenfinnan, would again wave over a field in which God would defend the right.
And such thoughts and hopes as these were the theme of many a poor soldier of the Reicudan Dhu, in their tents and bivouacs, on the plains of Flanders, on the Heights of Abraham, and by the vast and then untrodden shores of the American lakes.
Similar thoughts, and the memory of all he had endured at the hands of the victorious party, together with the confiscation of his estate, which had descended to him through twelve generations of martial ancestors, made Roderick MacGillivray a grave and somewhat sombre man. He had fought valiantly in the first line at Culloden, where he was one of the guard, the Leine Chrios (i.e. Shirt of Mail, or Children of the Belt) around the Laird of Dunmacglas,* who led the Macintoshes, and who was next day murdered by the English soldiers, when found all but dead of wounds upon the field, where they dashed out his brains by the butts of their muskets as he lay in the arms of his distracted wife.
* The Fort of the Greyman's Son.
After that day, MacGillivray became a fugitive and outlaw, but was happy enough to be one of those eight brave men who, with MacDonald of Glenaladale—the faithful, the gentle, and the true Glenaladale—watched, guarded, and tended by night and by day the unfortunate Prince Charles in the wild cavern of Coire-gaoth among the beautiful Braes of Glenmorriston. There these starving and outlawed men made a bed of heather for the royal fugitive, and there he slept and lurked in perfect security, though thirty thousand pounds were set upon his head by George II., and though the Saxon drum was heard, where the flames of rapine were seen rising on the vast steeps of Corryarrack.
The memory of those stirring days—this companionship with the son of his exiled King, with Prionse Tearlach Righ nan Ghael, words that were said and promises made, with all that winning charm of manner, for which the princes of the House of Stuart were so remarkable, sank deep in Roderick's heart; and there were times when in his soul he panted for the hour when again the White Rose would shed its bloom upon the wasted Highland hills, when the swift vengeance of the loyal would fall on the faithless clans of the west, and the shrill wild pibroch of the Clan Chattan would ring in fierce triumph above the burial mounds at Culloden.