Chapter XV: Desolation

Full of his own thoughts, which were fiery and bitter, and feeling fully resolved to challenge Montrose to a combat, according to the laws of honour and of arms, Rob rode fast along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond: but darkness had set in before he drew near Inversnaid.

Then his heart began to swell with other and kindlier emotions as he pictured his home and his household--his wife and their fairhaired children welcoming him back; and already their voices seemed to sound in his ears, and their smiling faces to come before him.

The moon had risen, and shed its light upon that lovely lake of many isles, on the vast shadowy masses of Ben Lomond and its wondrous scenery, through which the rugged pathway wound, overhung in some places by gloomy pines, by impending rocks, or the feathery sprays of the silver birch.

With scorn and defiance of Montrose, certain emotions of pride and security swelled the heart of MacGregor, as he rode on; for again he was at home--in the home of the swordsman and shepherd--the abode of the wolf and the eagle, where yet, in the garb of old Gaul--

The hunter of deer and the warrior trod,
To his hills that encircle the sea.

From some points Loch Lomond resembled a great river, lying between lofty mountains, its bosom dotted with isles that are covered with trees, dark brushwood, or moss of emerald green. Bold headlands of rock seemed to jut forth in the water, which shone in the moonlight like a sheet of silver, and hills that were covered with wood filled up the background.

And there, in the moonlight, lay the loveliest of all Loch Lomond's green and woody isles, the MacGregors' burying-place--the Place of Sleep, Inchcailloch, or the Isle of Nuns, with its ruined chapel and all its solemn trees.

The Red MacGregor gazed on it wistfully, for there had all the dead of his persecuted clan been gathered, generation after generation, ever since the days of Donngheal, the son of King Alpin; and now he whipped his lagging horse, and ere long reached the narrow track which led to his home at Inversnaid.

The stillness began to surprise him--no cattle lowed on the hills, no dog barked or bayed to the moon as she waded through the fleecy clouds, and one or two cottages, whose inmates he knew, seemed to have fallen in or been levelled.

A strange foreboding of evil stole into his breast.

At last his own house, with its whitewashed walls and its roof thatched with heather, rose before him in the glen; but no smoke curled from its chimneys--no light appeared in any of its windows, and all was solemnly and oppressively still in the homestead around it--still and silent as the islet of the dead that lay in the shining lake below.

Dismounting, he led his horse by the bridle, and was about to approach the door, when three Highlanders appeared suddenly before him: one carried a gun, and was fully armed; the other two bore a dead deer, which was slung by the feet from the branch of a tree that rested on their shoulders.

He with the gun came boldly forward, and demanded "who went there?"

"The Red MacGregor," replied Rob, in Gaelic.

"Inversnaid!" exclaimed the three men, joyously; and, dropping the deer, they almost embraced him, for they proved to be Greumoch and two other MacGregors, who were among his most trusted and valued followers.

"What does all this mean?" he exclaimed; "why is my house shut, and where are the people?"

"Ask Montrose!" said Greumoch, fiercely.

"Montrose! I left him but a few hours ago in Strathblane," replied Rob.

"And he told you nothing?"

"Only that I owed him money, and that this money he would have--every penny. But speak quickly--Helen, the boys--what has happened?"

The resentment of Rob Roy was deep, fierce, and bitter when he found that his house and homestead had been swept of everything, and that nothing remained for him and his family but an abode in the woods or on the mountain side; and he uttered a terrible vow for vengeance on Killearn and on the duke his master.

Ponderous locks now secured the door of his own house against him. These Greumoch's gun might soon have blown to pieces, and thus he might have forced an entrance; or he might have repaired to the house of his nephew at Glengyle. But Rob did neither; he simply desired Greumoch to conduct him to Helen, who now had found shelter in a little cottage--a veritable hut--in a glen at some distance; and the first boding sound that reached his ear as he approached it was the melancholy wail of the bagpipe, as Alpine, the family piper, played Helen's _Lament_, which we believe has never been committed to paper, but has been handed down from one generation to another.

The presence of his wife and children (one of the latter sick and ailing, too), instead of soothing Rob Roy, added fuel to the flame that burned within him; and the alternate grief and energy of Helen spurred his longing for vengeance on those who had so foully wronged him.

Next, his followers crowded around him, detailing their losses and insults, grasping significantly the hilts of their swords and dirks, and gradually lashing each other into greater fury, for hitherto they had lacked but a leader, and now that Rob had returned they expected him to march them at once against the Grahams, or whoever might come in their way. But Rob Roy had greater aims in view than the mere gratification of private revenge; so he resolved to be patient for a time.

"And when that time comes, Helen," said he, with solemn energy, "I will lay the Lennox in flames, and harry Mugdock to its groundstone. There is not a house or homestead, a castle or village, but I shall lay in ashes, between this and the Trongate of Glasgow, unless my hopes and measures fail me."

Helen answered only by her tears, and pressed her sick baby closer to her breast.

"Woe to you, Killearn," said Greumoch, while feeling the edge of his poleaxe; "if you fall into my hands you shall have a short life!"

Next morning Rob placed Helen on a strong Highland garron, and slung the children in two panniers on the back of the horse he had ridden from Glasgow. Greumoch, MacAleister, and others shouldered their long Spanish muskets, the pipers struck up "MacGregors' March," and in this fashion the family of Inversnaid departed to seek a wilder part of the country, where, rent free, they might dwell amid the hills.

Rob retired twelve Scottish (or twenty English) miles further into the Highlands, but he still remained upon what he considered his own territory; and there, building what was termed a creel-house, resolved to live in open war with, and defiance of, the Duke of Montrose, who, by a regular form of law, had now become, for a time, legal proprietor of Inversnaid and Craigrostan!

In the wilds of Glendochart Rob began to frame daring political schemes, which the protection afforded to him by his kinsman, Sir John Campbell, of Glenorchy, now Earl of Breadalbane, enabled him to mature, and arms were collected and hidden in secret places, and men were prepared for the coming strife.

Aware that the Paper Court of Dunedin (as the Highlanders disdainfully term the College of Justice at Edinburgh) was not a place where a Celt--especially a MacGregor--was likely to obtain equity, when opposed to a powerful duke who supported the Whigs, whose government Rob abhorred--he resolved to set all law at defiance, and, like a true Scot of the olden time, to confide in his sword alone.

In addition to the seizure of all he possessed on earth, the advertisements which appeared, again and again, in the columns of the "Edinburgh Evening Courant," stung him to the soul; for therein he was stigmatized as a fraudulent bankrupt, an outlaw, and robber--as if it was sought to make him one, for the express purpose of destroying him. One runs as follows:--

"All magistrates and officers of his Majesty's forces are entreated to seize upon Rob Roy, and the money which he carries with him, until the persons concerned in the money may be heard against him; and that notice be given, when he is apprehended, to the keepers of the Exchange Coffee-house at Edinburgh, and the keeper of the Coffee-house at Glasgow, where the parties concerned will be advertised, and the seizers shall be very reasonably rewarded for their pains." (_Edinburgh Courant_, No. 1,058.)

"Now, Helen," said he, trampling the paper under foot, and then casting it into the bogwood fire that blazed on the floor of their cabin, "by the soul o' Ciar Mhor, our foes shall find that the days of Glenfruin are come again! Henceforward, all is at end between us and the Lowlanders, and we shall devote ourselves to war and death!"

When Craigrostan, the last of his patrimony, was taken from him, MacGregor was so exasperated (to quote Browne's "Highland History") "that he declared perpetual war against the duke, and resolved that in future he should supply himself with cattle from his grace's estates, a resolution which he literally kept, and for THIRTY years he carried off the duke's flocks with impunity, and disposed of them publicly in different parts of the country."

The historian adds that these cattle generally belonged to the duke's tenants, who were thus impoverished and unable to pay their rents. He so levied, at the point of the sword, contributions in meal and money, but never until it had first been delivered by the poor tenants to the duke's storekeeper, to whom he always delivered a receipt for the quantity he carried off. At settling the money rents, he frequently attended with a strong band of chosen men, and giving receipts in due form, pocketed the rents of Montrose, who soon began to repent, in bitterness, that he had ever molested Rob Roy.