When Claverhouse left Stirling, he had but sixty horse. In little more
than a month he was at the head of seventeen hundred men. He obtained
reinforcements from Ireland. The Macdonalds, and the Camerons, and the
Gordons, were all his. A vassal of the Marquis of Athol had declared for
him even in the castle of Blair, and defended it against the clan of his
master. An event still more strange was produced by the spell of his
presence,--the clansmen of Athol deserted their chief, and joined his
standard. He kindled the hills in his cause, and all the life of the
North was gathering around him.
Mackay, with the Covenanters, the regiments from Holland, and the
Cameronians, went from Perth to oppose his entrance into the Lowlands.
The minds of men were suspended. Should he defeat Mackay, it was plain
that the crown would soon be restored to James Stuart, and the woes of
Scotland come again.
In that dismal juncture I was alone; for Quintin Fullarton, with all the
Cameronians, was with Mackay.
I was an old man, verging on threescore.
I went to and fro in the streets of Edinburgh all day long, inquiring of
every stranger the news; and every answer that I got was some new
triumph of Dundee.
No sleep came to my burning pillow, or if indeed my eyelids for very
weariness fell down, it was only that I might suffer the stings of
anxiety in some sharper form; for my dreams were of flames kindling
around me, through which I saw behind the proud and exulting visage of
Dundee.
Sometimes in the depths of the night I rushed into the street, and I
listened with greedy ears, thinking I heard the trampling of dragoons
and the heavy wheels of cannon; and often in the day, when I saw three
or four persons speaking together, I ran towards them, and broke in upon
their discourse with some wild interrogation, that made them answer me
with pity.
But the haste and frenzy of this alarm suddenly changed: I felt that I
was a chosen instrument; I thought that the ruin which had fallen on me
and mine was assuredly some great mystery of Providence: I remembered
the prophecy of my grandfather, that a task was in store for me, though
I knew not what it was; I forgot my old age and my infirmities; I
hastened to my chamber; I put money in my purse; I spoke to no one; I
bought a carabine; and I set out alone to reinforce Mackay.
As I passed down the street, and out at the West-port, I saw the people
stop and look at me with silence and wonder. As I went along the road,
several that were passing inquired where I was going so fast? but I
waived my hand and hurried by.
I reached the Queensferry without, as it were, drawing breath. I
embarked; and when the boat arrived at the northern side I had fallen
asleep; and the ferryman, in compassion, allowed me to slumber
unmolested. When I awoke I felt myself refreshed. I leapt on shore, and
went again impatiently on.
But my mind was then somewhat calmer; and when I reached Kinross I
bought a little bread, and retiring to the brink of the lake, dipped it
in the water, and it was a savoury repast.
As I approached the Brigg of Earn I felt age in my limbs, and though the
spirit was willing, the body could not; and I sat down, and I mourned
that I was so frail and so feeble. But a marvellous vigour was soon
again given to me, and I rose refreshed from my resting-place on the
wall of the bridge, and the same night I reached Perth. I stopped in a
stabler's till the morning. At break of day, having hired a horse from
him, I hastened forward to Dunkeld, where he told me Mackay had encamped
the day before, on his way to defend the Pass of Killicrankie.
The road was thronged with women and children flocking into Perth in
terror of the Highlanders, but I heeded them not. I had but one thought,
and that was to reach the scene of war and Claverhouse.
On arriving at the ferry of Inver, the field in front of the Bishop of
Dunkeld's house, where the army had been encamped, was empty. Mackay had
marched towards Blair-Athol, to drive Dundee and the Highlanders, if
possible, back into the glens and mosses of the North; for he had learnt
that his own force greatly exceeded his adversary's.
On hearing this, and my horse being in need of bating, I halted at the
ferry-house before crossing the Tay, assured by the boatman that I
should be able to overtake the army long before it could reach the
meeting of the Tummel and the Gary. And so it proved; for, as I came to
that turn of the road where the Tummel pours its roaring waters into the
Tay, I heard the echoing of a trumpet among the mountains, and soon
after saw the army winding its toilsome course along the river's brink,
slowly and heavily, as the chariots of Pharaoh laboured through the
sands of the Desert; and the appearance of the long array was as the
many-coloured woods that skirt the rivers in autumn.
On the right hand, hills, and rocks, and trees rose like the ruins of
the ramparts of some ancient world; and I thought of the epochs when the
days of the children of men were a thousand years, and when giants were
on the earth, and all were swept away by the flood; and I felt as if I
beheld the hand of the Lord in the cloud weighing the things of time in
His scales, to see if the sins of the world were indeed become again so
great as that the cause of Claverhouse should be suffered to prevail.
For my spirit was as a flame that blazeth in the wind, and my thoughts
as the sparks that shoot and soar for a moment towards the skies with a
glorious splendour, and drop down upon the earth in ashes.