Chapter XXXVIII: Rob Roy Taken

The duke wore a blue coat, faced and cuffed with scarlet, richly braided on the breast with broad bars of gold lace. Save at the throat, it was unbuttoned, and thus displayed a cuirass and gorget, both of the finest steel, which he wore in lieu of a vest, and over which fell the ends of his long cravat of Mechlin lace. He had on a three-cornered hat, a flowing white periwig, and black jackboots with gold spurs; and a sword and a brace of silver-mounted pistols hung at his waistbelt.

By his side were Colonel Grahame, Quartermaster Stewart, and others; for his grace had come hastily into the mountains with three hundred men, to reinforce the party from which Rob had escaped so successfully at Crianlarich.

"At last, MacGregor Campbell," said the duke, through his clenched teeth, while his eyes sparkled with triumph and resentment; "AT LAST you are in my power, and your doom hangs upon my lips!"

MacGregor uttered a scornful laugh, and though his hands were bound behind him, he drew his sturdy figure proudly up to its full height and measured the duke with a provoking glance of profound disdain--viewing him deliberately from head to foot.

"Now, my bold reiver, what have you to say?"

"For myself, my lord duke?"

"Yes," said Montrose, fiercely.

"Simply, that by fraud and force you have won a poor victory over a single man. _Use_ that victory as you please, Montrose, but _abuse_ it not."

"Nay, nay, I shall use it justly, as I am entitled to do; for you know that you have long been a doomed felon, on whose head a price has been set."

"By whom?" asked MacGregor, disdainfully.

"The king and government."

"A German usurper and Scottish traitors like yourself!" replied the other furiously.

"Ha!--it matters not how you name them; you are nevertheless a foredoomed felon, and as such shall you die!"

"And who caused me to be stigmatized as such--who but you? Silence! Duke of Montrose, and lead me where you will; but be silent, I say. Honour is like fine steel--breathe upon it and the surface becomes stained. Sorely have you striven to stain the honour of Rob Roy; but you have striven in vain; for Rob will be remembered among these green mountains and in the hearts of the Gael--look down, O Heaven, and bless them!--when you, duke so venal and corrupt, will be remembered only as the enemy and oppressor of him you would destroy."

"Egad, I like your spirit, MacGregor!" said Colonel Grahame, as he sheathed his sword with an emphatic jerk.

"My spirit may break, Colonel Grahame, but never shall it bend," replied Rob Roy; "I may have my faults like other men, but if the best of us had these written on his forehead, he would, as the saw hath it, pull his bonnet well over his eyes. Till your chief made himself my enemy, I was a quiet, a peaceful, and a God-fearing man; but he made desolate my hearth and home; he seized my patrimony, and cast me forth into the world a broken man, an outlaw, and a beggar, with a price upon my head, to be hunted like a wild beast by soldiers and militia, horse and foot--I, a Highland gentleman, whose lineage was equal, if not superior to his own. But as Fingal said to Swaran, 'The desert is enough for me, with all its deer and echoing woods!' so I took my target and claymore, and retired to the steep mountain and the wild forest, with my good wife and my little ones. Since then, all we have endured has been enough to summon all the spirits of the Clan Alpine who have suffered and died since the field of Glenfruin, back from blessed heaven to the vengeance of earth!"

"Let their spirits come," said the duke, with fierce irony; "see if they will avail much, when you swing by the neck in the Broad Wynd of Stirling, even as Alaster of Glenstrae swung after his fine day's work at Glenfruin."

"We are not yet in the Broad Wynd of Stirling," said Rob, confidently; "but set me free for five minutes--put my broadsword in my hand, and here, on this plot of grass, will I fight you face to face and foot to foot--ay, with three of your best men, if you choose."

"I do not fight with felons," replied Montrose, loftily.

"Will you not meet me like a brave,--I cannot call you an honest, man?"

"I do not fight with felons," was again the cutting reply.

MacGregor crimsoned with passion, and exclaimed hoarsely,--"Woe to you, dastard duke! Alas, that I should ever speak thus to one who bears the good name that was borne by the Great Marquis, the gallant Dundee!"

"Enough of this," said the duke, also becoming red and husky with passion. "To horse, gentlemen, and away for Stirling. Colonel Grahame, bind the villain to one in whom you can place implicit trust, and let him be well watched. The man who permits him to escape, I will pistol with my own hand!"

MacGregor was secured to a horse behind a trooper, whose waistbelt was passed through the belt from which his sword and pistols were taken; his hands were also tied behind, so that it was impossible for him either to slip or leap off; and in this ignominious fashion, escorted by nearly four hundred of the duke's local militia, horse and foot, he was carried away a prisoner.

As they departed from the Haunted Well, he gazed sadly at the stiffened corpse of his faithful friend and foster-brother, Callam, son of the arrow-maker,--one who had never failed him in many an hour of peril, and whose remains were left where he fell, and where a cairn now marks his grave.

The captors had to travel with great secrecy, lest the country people should rise to the rescue of Rob Roy; but with all their speed the journey of twenty miles towards the banks of the Forth occupied the whole day, so rough and roadless was the district through which they marched, down by Glenfinglas and Bochastle, through the pass of Leney and by the beautiful Braes of Callender; and many a wistful glance their unfortunate prisoner cast back to the mountains; for they looked down on his secluded home, where his wife and children dwelt, and where ere long they would be bewailing him in hopeless sorrow.