no other resources than a handful of troopers and a rabble of half-armed, half-naked, and wholly undisciplined savages.  And in truth experience had shown that these fierce and jealous spirits were little less dangerous as allies than as enemies.  Every clan had its hereditary feud, and no one could say that on the day of battle the claymores might not be drawn against each other instead of against the common foe.  Branches even of the same stock did not conceive themselves inevitably bound by the tie of blood, though it was a claim never forgotten when it was convenient to make or allow it.  Sometimes a few of the smaller clans would make common cause against the oppressions of a more powerful, or the cattle of a wealthier neighbour; but it was rarely that friendship went beyond the conditions of an armed neutrality.  Though the feudal system had long prevailed in many parts of the Highlands, it had never superseded the older patriarchal system.  The chief of the clan might pay homage to a great lord like Argyle or Athole; but in the clan he was king, and his word was law.  Moreover, brave as the Highlanders undoubtedly were, they were not a warlike race.  They would rise to the signal of the fiery cross, without questioning the cause; and they would on occasion fight for their own hand, for revenge or plunder.  But the long service of a regular war was little to their taste.  Of military science and military discipline they knew nothing.  To win the battle with the rush of the first onset, and when the battle was won to make off to their homes with all the plunder they could lay hands on,—­this was their notion of warfare, and it was a notion which the chiefs were too ignorant or too prudent to interfere with.  What chance could there be of inducing such spirits as these to combine in one great confederacy, and to undertake a long and desperate struggle for the sake of a king of whom the most part had never heard, and of a cause which they could not understand?

But Dundee had learned something at Dunblane which had given him fresh views.  During the few hours he had passed there he had talked much with a Highland gentleman, Alexander Drummond of Bahaldy, son-in-law to Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, the great chief of the clan Cameron.  Drummond told him that Lochiel had been busy all the winter among his neighbours, that they were now ripe for war, and were only waiting a leader and some succours of regular troops and ammunition; that James had been communicated with, and had approved their plan in a letter written with his own hand to Lochiel; and that an early day had been appointed for a rendezvous of the clans in Lochaber, the headquarters of the Camerons.