"To you, Captain Clifford," resumed Rob Roy, "I return your sword. The arms of your men I retain for the service of King James and the protection of my own people. I restore you all to liberty; but bear this message to the Saxon Governor of Dumbarton, to General Carpenter, or whoever sent you hither, that of the next band which on a hostile errand enters the country of Rob Roy, not one shall return alive if I can help it—not one, by the blessed God of my forefathers, and by St. Colme of Iona, for they shall be cut off root and branch, and the eagle of the hill shall alone tell their fate." He pressed his bare dirk to his lips as he spoke, and many of his men followed the example. "Go, sir; and may we never meet again. My foster-brother, with a hundred of my men, shall escort you so far as Bucklyvie to assist in bearing your wounded. After reaching that place you will be safe from all molestation. Farewell. Strike up, Alpine!" he said to the piper, while saluting the captain with one hand and sheathing his sword with the other.
Then, as the disarmed band of soldiers, after getting, by Rob's orders, a good dram of whisky each, carrying or supporting their wounded, and escorted by MacAleister with a hundred picked men, proceeded in the shadowy gloaming down the dark and rugged pass of Aberfoyle, Alpine's great warpipe woke its many echoes with the triumphant pibroch of "Glenfruin."
Only two MacGregors were killed, so instantaneous had been their onset; but ten redcoats lay dead in the pass; and these the MacGregors buried with reverence by the wayside, where their tomb may yet be seen.
Encouraged by this victory to attempt greater enterprises, MacGregor now resolved to break down into the Lowlands, to carry off the spoil of his enemies; and remembering that it was about the time when the rents of his great enemy the Duke of Montrose were collected, he conceived the idea of visiting the chamberlain on the rent-day—of putting the whole money in his own pocket, and, to punish his grace for old scores, to carry off the obnoxious Killearn bodily into the mountains.
"As the runnels from a hundred hills unite in one, and form a mighty stream," said he, in a stirring address to his followers, "so must all the branches of our outraged people now converge in one. From Glengyle and Glenstrae, from Menteith and Balquhidder, let us muster and march—march down on those sons of little men, the Lowlanders; and they shall shrink before us like dry leaves beneath the lightning! Our forefathers sleep on Inchcailloch; but we, alas! must find our graves on the mountain side, where nothing shall mark them to future times but a grey cairn or a greener spot amid the purple heather."
"Down on the mongrel bodachs—down on the Whigamores!" responded his followers, brandishing their swords with almost savage glee; for to the Highlander then the single word Whig expressed the acme of anything that was sordid, mean, and treacherous to king and country.
CHAPTER XXXI.
ROB SEIZES THE RENTS OF MONTROSE.
It was about the middle of summer in the year 1717, when Rob Roy, leaving the main body of his followers, under his son Coll, posted among the hills of Buchanan, where they had collected a great herd of cattle, the spoil of their hereditary enemies, set forth with twenty men and his favourite piper, Alpine, on a visit to Killearn.
MacAleister and Greumoch were, of course, among these chosen twenty, who were literally his Leine a chrios—the select men of his followers, meaning in English his "shirt of mail," or children of the belt—men at all times ready to support, obey, defend, or die for him.