"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, with this," 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.
Whether victorious or not, Rob Roy could scarcely hope that an act so daring as an attack on a royal garrison would pass unpunished; but he heeded not. By that deed he resolved to make a terrible protest against the usurpation of his land, and the erection of such a building in the country of the MacGregors.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE STORMING OF INVERSNAID.
The eventful night proved dark and cloudy. The month was April, but already the young buds had burst, and were in full leaf in the wild woods that bordered Loch Lomond, when Rob clambered out of the deep rocky fissure which formed the approach to his cavern, and sought the place of tryst.