"Noble Dundee, to victory or the grave, to the field or the scaffold, I will follow thee, and in that hour when I fail in my duty or allegiance, may woe betide me and dishonour blot my name!"
Dundee pressed his hand and replied,
"In the wilds of the pathless north, ten thousand claymores will flash from their scabbards at the call of Dundee. The loyal and gallant clans have not forgotten the glories of Alford, Inverlochy, and Auldearn, when the standard of James Grahame, of Montrose, was never unfurled but to victory. Again, like him, will I lead them against this Dutch usurper, whom in an evil hour I saved from death upon the battle-field of Seneff. Yes, after he had fallen beneath the hoofs of Vaudemont's Reitres, I saved his life at the risk of my own, and horsed him on my own good charger, when, could his future ingratitude to me, and the usurpation of this hour have been foreseen, my petronel had blown his brains to the wind."
"Ha! what wants his grace of Gordon?" said Dunbarton as the flash of a cannon broke from the dark castle wall, and a puff of white smoke curled away on the clear morning air, while the echoes of the report reverberated like thunder among the black basaltic cliffs of the great fortress past which they were riding. A little arched postern to the westward opened, and a soldier appeared waving a white flag from the brow of the steep rock, which the turretted bastion overhung. The troop halted, and their kettle-drums gave three ruffles in honour of the duke.
"Tarry for me, gentlemen comrades," said Claverhouse, "while I confer with 'the cock of the north,'" and galloping to the base of the castle rock, he dismounted, and notwithstanding his steel harness, buff coat, and jack boots, clambered with great agility to the postern, where he held a conference with the Duke of Gordon.
What passed was never known; but each is said to have needlessly exhorted the other to loyalty and truth.
The multitude, who from a distance had watched the departure of the hated Dundee, fled back to the city, and reported to the Lords of the Convention, that "there was a coalition and general insurrection of the adherents of the bluidy Claver'se," and thereupon a dreadful panic ensued. The city drums beat the point of war; the Duke of Hamilton and other revolutionists, who had for weeks past been secretly bringing great bands of their vassals into Edinburgh, where they were concealed in cellars and garrets, now rushed to arms, and the members of Convention, confined in their hall, were terrified and put to their wit's end by the uproar. Lord Mersington, it is related, exchanging his senatorial robe and wig, "for ane auld wife's mutch and plaid," fled to his lodging, and appeared no more that day; but their fears were causeless, for Dundee, and the devoted cavaliers who accompanied him in his chivalric but hopeless enterprise, were then passing the woods and morasses of Corstorphine, on their route to the land of the Gael.
At a hand gallop they soon flanked the grey rocks and pine covered summits of those beautiful hills, and the sequestered village lay before them, with the morning smoke curling from its moss-roofed cottages, its broad lake swollen by the melting snows, but calm as a mirror, save where the swan and dusky waterouzel squattered its shining surface; the ancient kirk peeped above a grove of venerable sycamores, and to the south stood the castle of the old hereditary Foresters of Corstorphine.
"What castles are these on the right and left?" asked Dundee. "I warrant Mr. Holster can tell; he knows everything and everybody."
"Yonder hold with the loch flowing almost to its gates, is the house of the Lord Forester," replied the cavalier trooper, "a leal man and true."