from carrying his idea into effect by the Revolution.  In the minds of these Western chiefs, then, William was the oppressor and James the deliverer.  Throughout the winter they had watched eagerly for news from the South.  At length they learned that the Estates had declared for William; that their prime enemy was restored to favour and power; and that Dundee, whose exploits against the party of which for three generations an Argyle had been the acknowledged head were well known to them, was an outlaw and a fugitive.  In him they at once recognised the leader for whom they waited.  Drummond was accordingly sent to invite him to their councils, and to promise that a sufficient escort should be ready at the proper time to convey him to the appointed meeting-place.

Meanwhile it had become necessary for Dundee to look to his own safety.  A more dangerous enemy than Leven was now in the field against him.  As soon as William had learned the decision of the Estates he had despatched a body of troops into Scotland under General Mackay.  Hugh Mackay, of Scourie, was himself of a Highland stock.  Like Dundee, he had learned the art of war first in France, and afterwards in the Low Countries, where he had risen to the command of the Scots Brigade, as those regiments were called which upwards of a century before the new Protestant enthusiasm of England had raised to support Holland against the tyranny of Spain.  He was a good man, a brave if not a dashing soldier, a prudent tactician, and well skilled in all the machinery of war.

Mackay at first contented himself with sending Livingstone and his dragoons after Dundee, while he turned his attention to Gordon, who was still maintaining some show of resistance in the castle.  But Livingstone was too late.  He found the nest warm, but the bird had flown.  Dundee had gone northwards over the Grampians into the Gordons’ country, where the Earl of Dunfermline, the Duke’s brother-in-law, at once joined him with a most welcome addition to his little band of troopers.  Mackay foresaw that the Highlands were to be the real scene of operations, and that no danger need be apprehended from the vapouring Gordon.  He sent word, therefore, to Livingstone to await him in Dundee, and marched himself for that place with some two hundred of his own brigade and one hundred and twenty of Lord Colchester’s dragoons.[79]

It is as difficult for the reader to follow Dundee through these April days as Mackay found it.  In the sounding hexameters of the “Grameis,” his movements are indeed described with more labour than lucidity; but at this early stage of the campaign it is not necessary to track him over every mountain and river, and by every town and castle.[80] It will be enough to say that in an incredibly short space of time he beat up for recruits the greater part of the counties of Aberdeen, Inverness, and Perth, while the bewildered Mackay, whose training and troops were alike unfitted to this sort of campaigning, toiled after him in vain.  He also found time for a flying visit to Dudhope, where his wife had been safely delivered of a son.  He can have stayed with her but a day at most; and when he left her, he was to see her face no more.