s alive wishes your personal health
and prosperity more than I do, affectionate and sincerely; and I should
be a very ungrateful man if it was otherways, for no man gave me more
proofs of love and friendship at home and abroad than John Forbes of
Colodin did.

"As to carrying your lime to Lovat, I shall do more in it than if it was
for my own use. I shall give the most pressing orders to my officers to
send in my tenants' horses; and to show them the zeal and desire that I
have to serve you, I shall send my own labouring horses to carry it,
with as much pleasure as if it was to build a house in Castle Downie."

Even his wife and his "bearns" are "Colodin's faithful slaves--" "I'll
never see a laird of Culodin I love so much," he declares in another
letter;--in which, also, he reminds Mr. Forbes of a promise that he
"will do him the honour, since he cannot himself at this time be
present, to hold up his forthcoming child to receive the holy water of
baptisme, and make it a better Christian than the father. I expect this
mark of friendship from my dear John Forbes of Culodin."[227]

Yet all these professions were wholly forgotten, when Lord Lovat, being
fairly established in his honours, no longer deemed the friendship of
the Forbes family necessary to him. An occasion then occurred, in which
Mr. Forbes's "grateful slave" showed the caprice inherent in his nature.
Forbes of Culloden had long been the representative of Inverness,
chiefly through the interest of Lord Lovat; but when Sir William Grant
came forward to oppose the return of Forbes, to the dismay of that
gentleman, Lord Lovat turned round, and, upon the plea of consanguinity,
used his interest in favour of the new candidate. The disappointment
resulting from this defeat is said to have preyed upon the spirits of
the worthy Laird of Culloden, and to have caused his death.[228]

The decline of this alliance between the Forbes family and Lord Lovat,
was the prelude to greater changes.

In order to repress the local disturbances in the Highlands, Government
had adopted a remedy, well termed by Sir Walter Scott, "of a doubtful
and dangerous character." This was the raising of a number of
independent companies among the Highlanders, to be commanded by
chieftains, and officered by their sons, by tackmen, or by _Dnihne_
vassals. At the period when those great military roads were formed in
the Highlands between the year 1715 and 1745, these companies were
better cal