Falling back, he immediately expired, just as daylight (which at that season scarcely passed away) brightened in the east.
All started and bent over him; but the fierce spirit of that remorseless cavalier had fled for ever, and his magnificent features, as the rigidity and pallor of death overspread them, assumed the aspect of a beautiful marble statue. A groan that burst from the lips of his brother, as he knelt down and closed his eyes; the heavy sobs of a few aged Highlanders; and the low wail of a lament, as the pipers of Glengarry poured it to the mountain-wind and echoing woods of Urrard, were the only sounds heard within that gloomy chamber, where the terror of the Presbyterians—the idol of the cavaliers, and the last hope of James, lay prostrate, to rise no more. Though by one faction styled the last and best of Scots—by the other, a murderer and outlaw; yet, by the cause for which he died, and the manner of his death, he closed in glory a life of singular ferocity and turbulence.
His remains were hurriedly interred in the rural kirk of Blair Athol; and the cause of King James was buried with him. His brother assumed his title; but died in great obscurity in France in 1700. The buff coat of Dundee, bearing the mark of the fatal ball, and stained with his blood, together with his helmet and other relics, are still preserved in the ducal castle of Blair.
Remembering the dying desire of their leader on the day after the battle, the Highland chiefs liberated all the prisoners on parole of honour not to serve against the King, Colonel Fergusson of Craigdarroch (notwithstanding all the exertions of his generous rival Finland) "being excepted," says Captain Crichton, in his Memoirs, "on account of his more than ordinary zeal for the new establishment."
In those days the uncertain means of communication between towns, and the great deficiency of certain information of public events, caused many strange and varying rumours of the Highland war to be circulated in the Lowlands, where the only newspaper was the Caledonius Mercurius, which had been published occasionally since the Restoration. But the astounding intelligence of the victory at Killycrankie, and the fall of Dundee, spread like wildfire through the low country, to which he had so long been a terror and scourge. The defeat of Cannon at the Haughs of Cromdale, and the utter prostration of James's banner in the north, was soon followed by his disaster at the Boyne, in Ireland, where the loss of a decisive battle compelled him again to seek refuge in France.
Poor Lilian, at home in the then secluded capital of Scotland, heard of those stirring events at long intervals; and to her they were a source of deep interest, and of many a sigh and hour of tears; but of Walter she heard no tidings. Whether he lay mouldering in the Pass of Killycrankie, among the haughs of Cromdale, or was wandering among the wildest fastnesses of the north, with the doom of proscription and treason hanging over him, she knew not; and time in no way soothed or alleviated the agonies of her suspense. On the return of Colonel Fergusson, whose apostacy had opened an easy path to preferment under the new order of affairs, she learned some faint rumours of his departure to France with the other officers of Dundee—for that horizon where the sun of the exiled Jacobites was setting—the lonely palace of St. Germain. Though the tidings fell like ice on the heart of the poor girl, any certainty was preferable to suspense; and with her good Aunt Grisel, she could only weep for the poor youth they loved so well, and pray and hope for happier times. To lighten the solitude his absence caused, she could not even hope for a letter; all intercourse with the court of the exiled King being proscribed under pain of banishment and death; and thus slowly the melancholy summer of 1690 passed on.
With the accession of William, and total subversion of the old high church party, all the sourness and severity of Presbyterian discipline (which at times compelled the proudest peers to endure a rebuke on the ignominious repentance-stool, or at least before a congregation) was resumed by the overbearing clergy in full sway. From the innate cavalier sentiments of her family, and the wavering politics of Aunt Grisel, Lilian had never been a very rigid Presbyterian; and now, looking upon the triumph of "the Kirk" as having driven her lover into exile, she felt her heart further than ever removed from Presbytery. She had still to endure the persecution of Clermistonlee, who, having in a few months spent all the Revolution had enabled him to extort by fines from his old cavalier friends, was now more reduced and desperate than ever; and, as a last shift, was compelled to dispose of his tower of Clermiston for a trifling sum to his more cautious gossip Mersington; and though the gaming-table replenished his exchequer at times, gaunt starvation stared him hourly in the face.
Though the native kindness and exceeding gentleness of Lilian's manner had always given this indefatigable suitor some hope of ultimate success, he soon found that, besieging her whenever she went abroad, and keeping spies upon her when at home—pestering her with presents, and letters the most flattering and submissive his ingenuity and skill could indite, did not bring him nearer the summit of his wishes. As his funds waxed lower, his perseverance increased; and he brought a new ally into the field, in the person of our old friend Mr. Ichabod Bummel, whose zeal for the Revolution had procured him an incumbency in the city, where, every Sunday, he had the felicity of preaching in a pulpit of his own, quoting that immortal work the Bombshell, railing at the exiled King, and all other "bloody-minded massmongers," and "dinging" many successive bibles to "blads" in the true Knox-like energy of his discourse. This meddling preacher, after the abduction of Lilian, and the scandalous reports the kirk party had so industriously circulated concerning it, had long deemed it, in his own phraseology, "a shameful and malapert fact, unseemly to men, and abominable in the sight of Heaven, that these twain should remain unwedded;" and by his influence, Clermistonlee was duly cited before the kirk session. Resistance was in vain, for now the clergy had succeeded to the Council's iron rod; and temporal proscription and spiritual excommunication invariably followed delay.
Clad in a sack of coarse white canvass, and on his knees before a staring congregation of stern Presbyterians, he "confessit his manifold sins and enormities," as the records of the kirk show, "and was rebukit by the godlie Mr. Bummel for the space of ane hour, being comparit to ane owle in ye desart;" and it appears that the minister, in his ire, made such direct reference to the abduction of Lilian, in language so pointed, so coarse, and unseemly, that, overwhelmed with shame and horror, the poor girl, unable to bear the scornful scrutiny and malevolent glances of her own sex, sank down in the gloomiest recesses of the old family pew, and swooned.
This event, together with the cruel inuendos industriously circulated by the gallants and gossips of the city, was her crowning misfortune; from that hour her peace was blighted, and her fair fame blotted for ever. Her friends pitied and acquaintance shunned her. She endured the most intense grief and bitterness of soul that a sensitive and delicate woman could feel; for even the very children of the Whig faction pelted her sedan when it entered the city, and called her "My Lord's leman," "Clermistonlee's minion," and the "Deil's dearie."