"A nis! a nis! a nis!" (now, now, now!) "E'en do and spaire nocht!"
"Hold, son of mine!" exclaimed his father, grasping his arm like a vice; "boy, would you destroy us all, and, it may be, with us King James's cause too? Let us await our time, and be assured it will come anon."
And so, seeing that a conflict would be useless, he prudently drew off his men to Strathfillan, where the Jacobite clans were forming a camp, prior to their joining the Earl of Mar; while the invaders of Craigrostan committed to the flames several thatched dwelling-houses, and the smoke of the conflagration, as it rolled along the mountain-slopes, added to the wrath and mortification of Rob and his men, as they retreated up the side of Loch Lomond.
While one party of volunteers pushed on the work of destruction, others searched for the missing boats, which they found far inland, at Inversnaid, and drew from thence to the water. Those which were useless they staved, or sunk, the rest were all conveyed to Dumbarton, where they were safely moored under the guns of the castle. And so ended the first expedition against Rob Roy, a history of which—as if it had been a campaign in a foreign land—was published soon after, in the form of a pamphlet.
Summonses were now issued by Government to all nobles and gentlemen, either in arms or who were suspected of being about to arm, including John, Earl of Mar, and fifty-two others, one of whom is designated as "Robert Roy, alias MacGregor."
CHAPTER XXI.
JOINS KING JAMES.
The brave Earl of Mar had now unfurled the standard of the exiled king at Braemar, as lieutenant-general of his forces, and after sending the "cross of fire" through the Highlands, in a few days he found himself at the head of ten thousand men, and half the peers of Scotland, with all those chiefs and gentlemen who had signed the Bond of Union, which Rob Roy had so luckily taken from Captain Huske, in Glendochart.
Mar's standard was of blue silk; it bore a thistle and the words NO UNION.
The Duke of Argyle, anxious to evince his attachment to the House of Hanover, hastened from London, to put himself at the head of his own clan, tenants, vassals, and all the troops then in Scotland—and a motley force they were, of English, Dutch, Switzers, and Lowland volunteers.