they could gather spoil,
they were ready to fling themselves into the fray, but as soon as they
had gained their end, they would make for the glens and leave their
general in the lurch. Whether they would rise or not depended neither
on the merits of William or James, but in the last issue upon their
chiefs--and the chiefs were not easy to move. Some of them were
hostile, and most of them lukewarm; and Dundee drank the cup of
humiliation as he canvassed for his cause from door to door. By
pleading, by arguing, by cajoling, by threatening, by promising and by
bribing, he got together some two thousand men, more or less, and he
had also the remains of his cavalry. His king had, as usual, left him
to fend for himself, and sent him nothing but an incapable Irish
officer called Cannon and some ragged Irish recruits, while MacKay was
watching him and following him with a well-equipped force. Now and
again the sun shone on him and he had glimpses of victory, driving
MacKay for days before him, and keeping up communication with
Livingstone, who had come from Dundee with his dragoons, and was
playing the part of traitor in MacKay's army--for Jean was still
determined, with characteristic obstinacy and indifference to
suspicion, to reap the fruit of her negotiation with Livingstone. It
seemed as if Dundee would at least gain a few troops of cavalry, which
would be a great advantage to him and a disquieting event for MacKay's
army. But again the Fates were hostile, and misfortune dogged the
Jacobite cause. MacKay got wind of the plot, Livingstone and his
fellow-officers were arrested, and Jean's scheming, with all its weary
expedients and bitter cost, came to naught.

When Claverhouse, in the height of summer, started on his last
campaign and descended on Blair Athole, he carried himself as one in
the highest spirits and assured of triumph. He sent word everywhere
that things were going well with the cause, and that the whole world
was with him; he made no doubt of crushing MacKay if he opposed his
march into the Lowlands, and of entering Edinburgh after another
fashion than he had left it. He kept a bold front, and wrote in a
buoyant style; but this was partly the pride of his house, and partly
the tactics of a desperate leader. Though a bigot to his cause, Graham
was not a madman. He was a thorough believer in the power of guerrilla
troops, but he knew that in the end they would go down before the
regulars. He hoped, by availi