Had Athole come next day, he might have experienced a warmer reception; for when Glengyle came in, more than seven hundred armed men, with twenty pipers, attended the funeral, and thus the old lady was born to her long home by her four grandsons; for in the Highlands it was ever a boy's pride, and one of the tests of manhood, to be permitted to act as bearer of a coffin, perhaps for many miles over steep and rugged mountain-paths.
On this occasion, Paul Crubach stumbled and fell on his face as the funeral procession approached the church of Balquhidder, deisail-wise, and then the old superstition was whispered, that he who stumbled at a burial was certain to be the next whose coffin would be borne that way; and this was fully realized when poor old Paul was found dead in bed next morning.
The duke never again had an opportunity of molesting Rob Roy, as on the 14th November of this year his grace paid the debt of nature at his castle of Blair, in Athole.
CHAPTER LV
ROB ROY IN LONDON.
From this time forward the life of the Red MacGregor was passed in ease and contentment; around him his sons grew to manhood, brave, active, and hardy; while the sons of those who had followed him to the battles of Sheriffmuir and Glensheil, to the storming of Inversnaid, the pass of Loch Ard, and to many a desperate conflict, became, under his care and advice, thriving cattle-dealers and industrious farmers. Yet neither he nor they were permitted entirely to let their swords rest, or forget the warlike lessons of their forefathers, for the battle of Culloden had not yet been fought, and in disposition and character the secluded Highland clans were little different from what their ancestors were when they routed the Romans on the Grampians, and hemmed them within the wall of Agricola—as their songs have it, "forcing the King of the World to retire beyond his gathered heaps."
In 1727, George II. was crowned, and six months after it was known in the Highlands that another "stranger filled the Stuarts' throne," and perhaps as many years elapsed before it was known in some of the Scottish isles, so dilatory was the transmission of news in the last century.
Even Montrose had now ceased to molest Rob Roy, who in his prosperity no longer "drew his grace's rents," but, extending his possessions beyond Balquhidder, leased some mountain-farms from the Duke of Argyle. On learning this, Montrose, in whose breast the old emotion of animosity still rankled, before the Lords of the Privy Council in London, accused his grace, who was the famous Field-Marshal John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, of "fostering and protecting an outlaw."
"I do neither," replied he, angrily; "I only supply Rob Roy with the wood of the forest, the fish of the stream, the grass of the glen, and the deer of the hill—the common heritage of all Highlanders. But you have afforded him cattle, corn, and meal; moreover, we are informed that he is your grace's factor, and that on more than one occasion he has collected your rents, especially at Chapelerroch."
Montrose, who felt the taunt implied his own inability to defend himself, bit his lip in angry silence.