re
carried, under an escort, to Dunkeld, the house of her uncle, the
Marquis of Athole. And here another match was very soon provided for
her, and again her consent was gained, and again the preliminaries of
marriage were arranged for this passive individual. The nobleman whom
her relations now proposed to her was William, afterwards eleventh Lord
Salton, also a Fraser, whose father was a man of great wealth and
influence, although referred to by the Master of Lovat as the
"representative of an unconsiderable branch of the Frasers who had
settled in the lowlands of the county of Aberdeen."[135] This match was
suggested to the Athole family by one Robert Fraser "an apostate
wretch," as the Master of Lovat calls him, a kinsman, and an advocate;
and he advised the Marquis of Athole, not only to marry the young lady
to the heir of Lord Salton, but also, by various schemes and manoeuvres,
to get Lord Salton declared head of the clan of Frasers. This plot was
soon divulged; disappointment, rage, revenge were raised to the height
in the breast of the Master of Lovat. His pride was as prominent a
feature in this bold and vindictive man, as his duplicity. Throughout
life, he could, it is true, bend for a purpose, as low as his designs
required him to bend; but the fierce exclusiveness of a Highland
chieftain never died away, but rankled in his heart to the last.

It must be admitted that he had just cause of irritation against the
Murrays, first for disputing the claim of his father to the Lovat title
and estates, a claim indisputably just; nor was their project for
constituting Lord Salton the head of the clan Fraser, either a wise or
an equitable scheme. It was heard with loud indignation in that part of
the country where the original stock of this time-honoured race were,
until their name was stained by the crimes of Simon Fraser, held in love
and reverence. It was heard by the Master of Lovat perhaps with less
expression of his feelings than by his followers; but the meditated
affront was avenged, and avenged by a scheme which none but a demon
could have devised. It was avenged; but it brought ruin on the head of
the avenger.

Perhaps in no other country, at the same period, could the wrongs of an
individual have been visited upon an aggressor with the same dispatch
and ruthless determination as in the Highlands. Until the year 1748,
when the spirit of clanship was broken, never to be restored, those
"hereditary monarchies