and, a good
understanding had long existed between the Mackintoshes and the town of
Inverness. Though the town in those days consisted only of some five
hundred mean buildings surrounded by a crazy wall, the busy little
colony of artisans which inhabited it, and the occasional visit of a
trading vessel to its port, had invested it among the Highlanders with
the reputation of vast wealth. Here was an opportunity for gratifying
his love of revenge and his love of plunder which Keppoch was not the
man to lose. He advanced through the territory of the Mackintoshes,
harrying and burning as he marched, up to the walls of Inverness. For
two days he lay before its crazy gates threatening fire and sword, while
the burghers mustered to arms within, and the ministers exhorted them
from the market-place. Such was the state of affairs Dundee found when
he and his troopers rode into the Highland camp on the first day of May.

Keppoch tried to excuse himself. The town, he said, owed him money, and
he sought only to recover his own. On the other hand, the magistrates
said that he had forced them to promise him four thousand marks. Dundee
answered that Keppoch had no warrant from him to be in arms, much less
to plunder. But it was not yet safe for him with his handful of horse to
use such brave language to the chief at the head of his eight hundred
claymores. He therefore temporised. By his advice the magistrates agreed
to pay two thousand dollars: half of this sum was raised on the spot
with some difficulty: for the other half Dundee gave his bond to
Keppoch. He also promised the magistrates that, when James was restored
to his throne, the money should be refunded to them. Dundee had saved
the town, but for the present he had lost his allies. Keppoch and his
thieves, laden with the silver of Inverness and the cattle of the
Mackintoshes, retired in dudgeon to their mountains.

But Dundee was destined to achieve something before he joined the muster
at Lochaber. After he had parted from Keppoch he turned westward down
the valley of the Ness, by the noble castle of Glengarry, which
Cumberland destroyed after Culloden, by Kilcummin, where Fort Augustus
now stands, memorable in his eyes as the spot whence Montrose had led
the clans to break the power of the Campbells at Inverlochy, and so
southwards again through the forest of Badenoch to the Tay. As he was
painfully toiling through this vast and rugged recruiting-ground word
was brought t