command men who were no better than common robbers; that he would
countenance such outrages no more, nor any longer keep in his army those
who disgraced the King's cause by their private quarrels. Keppoch, who
would infallibly have struck his dirk into any other man who had used
such language to him, attempted some lame excuses, muttered an apology,
and ended by promising for the future neither he nor any of his men
would stir a foot save at the General's command. There is no stronger
proof of Dundee's genius and capacity for affairs than the singular
influence he was able in a few short weeks to gain over men who could
not speak his language and who hated his race. When on the dark day of
Culloden the wavering clans looked in vain to their Prince, an old
chief, who had heard his father talk of Ian Dhu Cean (Black John, the
Warrior), exclaimed in a passion of rage and grief, "Oh, for an hour of
Dundee!"

But loth as he was to engage Mackay with the Highlanders alone, Dundee
knew that he could not hope to keep them long together inactive.
Provisions were running short. If they could not harry James's enemies,
they would make free with their own. Dundee was particularly anxious to
give no cause of offence to those clans whose neutrality he hoped to be
able to turn into friendship. Already a serious prospect of disunion had
threatened the little army. A party of the Camerons had made a raid on
the Grants, in which a Macdonald of Glengarry had been killed. The man
had become affiliated to the Grants, and had refused to join the muster
of his own tribe. He had therefore forfeited all the right of clanship.
Yet Glengarry, as much perhaps from policy as from any overpowering
sense of kinship, demanded vengeance; and it needed all the combined
tact of Dundee and Lochiel to prevent him from drawing out his men to
attack the Camerons. When, therefore, Dundee learned that Mackay had
left Inverness to join some reinforcements from Edinburgh, he determined
on action.

The troops Mackay expected to find in Badenoch were six hundred men of
his own Scots Brigade under Colonel Ramsay. Ruthven Castle on the Spey
was the place of meeting, and May 26th the time. But Ramsay had been
detained in Edinburgh by an alarm of an invasion from France, and it was
not till the 27th that he entered the Athole country. Here he learned
that Dundee was on the march to meet him. The population did not seem
friendly: he could get no news of Mackay; and on