ned the lives of others at first treated! "We have many
advertisements," adds Thomas Lovat, "that Athole is coming here in
person, with all the armed men he is able to make, to compel us to duty,
and that without delay. If he come, so we are resolved to defend
ourselves; the laws of God, of nature, and the laws of all nations, not
only allowing, but obliging all men, _vim vi repellere_. And I should
wish from my heart, if it were consistent with divine and human laws,
that the estates of Athole and Lovat were laid as a prize, depending on
the result of a fair day betwixt him and me."[145] It was, perhaps, an
endeavour to avert the impending ruin and devastation that followed,
that the Master of Lovat gave their liberty to Lord Saltoun and Lord
Mungo Murray, although not until he had threatened them both with
hanging for interfering with his inheritance, and compelling Lord
Saltoun to promise that he would, on arriving at Inverness, send a
formal obligation for eight thousand pounds, never more to concern
himself with the affairs of the Lovat estate, and that neither he nor
the Marquis of Athole would ever prosecute either Lord Lovat or his son,
or their clan in general, for the disgrace they had received in having
been made prisoners, for any of the transactions of this affair.[146]

But it was evident that, in spite of this concession, the vengeance of
the Marquis of Athole never slept; and that he was resolved to wreak it
upon the head of the wretch who had for ever blasted the happiness of
his sister.

The Master of Lovat was shortly aware that it would no longer be
prudent to remain with his victim in the castle of Downie. His wife, as
it was then his pleasure to call her, remained in a condition of the
deepest despair. She would neither eat nor drink whilst she was in his
power; and her health appears to have suffered greatly from distress and
fear. In the dead of night she was summoned to leave Castle Downie, to
be removed to a more remote and a wilder region, where the unhappy
creature might naturally expect, from the desperate character of her
pretended husband, no mitigation of her sorrows. Since rumours were
daily increasing of the approach of Lord Athole's troops, the clan of
Fraser was again, when Lady Lovat was conveyed from the scene of her
anguish, called forth to assist their leader, and the wail of the
coronach was again heard in that dismal and portentous night: for
portentous it was. This crime, the