On the following morning the party from Paisley went on their
expedition, and arrived at Inversnaid. Here, in order to "arouse those
thieves and rebels from their dens," they fired a gun through the roof
of a house on the declivity of a mountain; upon which an old woman or
two came crawling out, and scrambled up the hill; but no other persons
appeared. "Whereupon," adds the narrator,[115] "the Paisley men, under
the command of Captain Finlason, assisted by Captain Scot, a half-pay
officer, of late a lieutenant of Colonel Kerr's regiment of dragoons,
who is indeed an officer, wise, stout, and honest; the Dumbarton men,
under the command of David Colquhoun and James Duncanson, of Garshark,
magistrates of the burgh, with several of the other companies, to the
number of an hundred men in all, with the greatest intrepidity leapt on
shore, got up to the top of the mountain, and drew up in order, and
stood about an hour, their drums beating all the while: but no enemie
appearing, they thereupon went in quest of the boats which the rebels
had seized; and having casually lighted on some ropes, anchors, and oars
hid among the shrubs, at length they found the boats drawn up a good
way on the land, which they hurled down to the loch. Such of them as
were not damaged, they carried off with them; and such as were, they
sunk or hewed in pieces. And that same night they return'd to Luss, and
thence next day, without the loss or hurt of so much as one man, to
Dumbarton, whence they had first set out altogether, bringing along with
them the whole boats they found in their way on either side the loch,
and in creeks of the isles, and moored them under the cannon of the
castle. And thus in a short time, and with little expense, the
M'Greigours were towed, and a way pointed how the Government might
easily keep them in awe."

The historian remarks, as a good augury, that a violent storm had raged
for three days before. In the morning, notwithstanding this much
magnified triumph on the part of his enemies, neither Rob Roy nor his
followers were in the least daunted, but went about "proclaiming the
Pretender," and carrying off plunder. "Yesternight,[116] about seven,"
writes the same historian, "we had ane accountt from one of our
townsmen, who had been five miles in the country, in the paroch of
Baldernock, that three or four hundred of the clans, forerunners of the
body coming, had at Drummen, near Dunkeld, proclaimed the Pretender; but
no