* On removing the walls of an old cottage near Tynecastle, a mile westward of Edinburgh, in 1843, the remains of a skeleton were found buried close by; the skull had been pierced by a bullet. In the plastered wall of the edifice a ball was found flattened against the stone.—Edin. Advert., April 18, 1843.
CHAPTER X.
THE PASS OF KILLYCRANKIE.
Heard ye not! heard ye not! how that whirlwind the Gael,
Through Lochaber swept down from Lochness to Locheil—
And the Campbells to meet them in battle array,
Came on like the billow, and broke like its spray!
Long, long shall our war-song exult in that day!
IAN LOM, OF KEPPOCH.
The Revolution might be said to be now fully achieved; save Dundee, Balcarris, and a few of their followers, all had submitted to the new sovereign whom these two nobles would rather have slain than acknowledged. Dundee had been required by a trumpet to return to the Convention; he treated the summons with scorn, and after cutting his way through a party sent to intercept him, reached the Highlands a proscribed fugitive, branded as an outlaw and traitor, and stigmatized with every epithet that Presbyterian rancour, heightened by the remembrance of his former military excesses, could heap upon him.
Colin, Earl of Balcarris, the High Treasurer, was captured and thrown into a dungeon. The weak and servile Melville, the crafty and fanatical Stair (the Scottish Tallyrand), and the not less crafty Duke of Hamilton, were now at the head of the Government, and these, though all staunch Presbyterians were by the king united in council with a few of the high church nobles, an intermixture which inflamed the animosities of both parties, and sowed the seeds of hatred, discord, and confusion.
With his troop of faithful cavaliers Dundee continued to wander from place to place in the Highlands until the beginning of May, 1689, when he appeared at the head of about two thousand clansmen led by Sir Donald Macdonald, the chiefs of Glengarry, Maclean, Locheil, and Clanronald—all names which shall ever be associated with the purest ideas of chivalry, generosity, and valour. He had only about 120 horse, but they were composed entirely of gentlemen, and were commanded by a Sir William Wallace, a brave cavalier; Walter Fenton was his cornet, and carried the standard.
Lieutenant-General Hugh Mackay, of Scoury, now commander-in-chief of the Scottish forces, Colonel-Commandant of the Scottish Brigade, and Privy Councillor of Scotland, marched against him at the head of nearly five thousand foot, and with two regiments of cavalry. Neither the fall of Edinburgh Castle (which Sir John Lanier demolished), nor the disappointment of assistance from Ireland which James had promised him, could damp the ardour of the brave Dundee. Deficiency of provisions had compelled him to shift his quarters frequently, and his devoted followers had endured the most severe privations; but under these they disdained to complain, when they knew that Dundee shared them all. Like Montrose, he was eminently calculated for a Highland leader. In his buff coat and headpiece he marched on foot, now by the side of one clan, and anon by the ranks of another, addressing the soldiers in their native Gaelic, flattering their long genealogies, and animating the fierce rivalry of clanship by reciting the deeds of their forefathers, and the sonorous verses of their ancient bards.
"It has ever been my maxim, Mr. Fenton," said he to our friend on one occasion, "that no general should command an irregular army in the field without becoming acquainted with every man under his baton."
On the 17th June, 1689, he marched to the Pass of Killycrankie, where one of the most decisive battles in Scottish history was bravely fought and fruitlessly won. Dawn was brightening on the hills of Athole; and Walter, who, quite exhausted by a long series of hardships, cold, starvation, and a pistol-shot wound, was sleeping under his horse's legs, was aroused by the sonorous and guttural cry of a sentinel, who screamed out in Gaelic—