re of the source
whence the assault proceeded, appeared to treat it lightly, talked of it
as an "idle attempt," never hinting that he guessed Lovat's
participation in the affair, and only lamenting that the ruffians had
"robbed the gardener and the poor weaver, who was a common benefit to
the country." Lovat, as it has been sagaciously remarked, the guilty
man, took it up much more knowingly.

This tissue of artifice was carried on for some weeks; first by a
vehement desire to have arms sent in order to repel the rebels, then by
hints that the inclinations of his people, and the extensive popularity
of the cause began to make it doubtful whether he could control their
rash ardour. "Your Lordship may remember," he wrote to Forbes, "that I
had a vast deal of trouble to prevent my men rising at the beginning of
this affair; but now the contagion is so general, by the late success of
the Highlanders, that they laugh at any man that would dissuade them
from going; so that I really know not how to behave. I really wish I had
been in any part of Britain these twelve months past, both for my
health and other considerations."[238] The feebleness of his health was
a point on which, for some reasons or other, he continually insisted. It
is not often that one can hear an aged man complain, without responding
by pity and sympathy.

"I'm exceeding glad to know that your Lordship is in great health and
spirits: I am so unlucky that my condition is the reverse; for I have
neither health nor spirits. I have entirely lost the use of my limbs,
for I can neither walk nor mount a horseback without the help of three
or four men, which makes my life both uneasy and melancholy. But I
submit to the will of God." This account, indeed, rather confirms a
tradition that Lord Lovat, after the separation from his wife, sank into
a state of despondency, and lay two years in bed previous to the
Rebellion of 1745. When the news of the Prince's landing was brought to
him, he cried out, "Lassie, bring me my brogues.--I'll rise too."[239]

At length, this wary traitor took a decisive step. His dilatoriness had
made many of the Pretender's friends uneasy, and showed too plainly that
he had been playing a double game. He was urged by some emissaries of
Charles Edward "to throw off the mask," upon which he pulled off his hat
and exclaimed "there it is!" He then, in the midst of his assembled
vassals, drank "confusion to the white horse, and all the generati