moured, and she has really been
usefull. Before this goes 'tis very likely I may have occassion to
inclose one I formerly wrote to you upon a certain occasion, but
did not then send as I told you in another, the thing not then
hapning, but we expect it every minut. Deserters of all kinds come
in to us pritty fast, foreigners as well as subjects; and if they
but give them time, I am perswaded great numbers will.

"'Tis now five o'clock and we have no accounts of any of the enimie
being come further than Dodoch, where a partie of them came last
night, so I'll detain the messenger. This goes by no stranger.
Perhaps they may find the roads impracticable, and by the burning
that they can advance no further,--at which, indeed, I shall not be
much surprised; and if so, may be forced to delay their
extraordinary march til more human weather for making warr. The King
was forced, sore against his will, to give these burning orders,--as
all of us were, could wee have helpt it; but this extrodinar manuver
of the enimie made it absolutly necessary: a fingor must be cut of
to save the whole body. I have ordered some copies of a proclamation
to be sent you, there is about two of the places burnt, and ther's
another order about the rest. Adieu.

"It were not amiss that this proclamation was sent to London. The
little young letter enclosed is for Lady Wigton, which pray cause
deliver."

On Tuesday, the last day of January, the Duke of Argyle passed the river
Eru, and took possession of Tullibardine. It has been stated by several
historians that the Jacobites fled from Perth on the same day; but the
following letter from Lord Mar, dated the first of February, shows that
the flight could not have taken place until the following day. This
curious letter, which was written at the early hour of six in the
morning, is unfinished. It is the last in the series of that
correspondence which has formed of itself a narrative of Lord Mar's
life, from his first taking upon himself the office of General and
Commander-in-Chief, to the hour when he virtually resigned that command.
In the midst of pressing danger his sanguine nature seems not to have
deserted him: his love of the underplots of life, the influence of "Kate
Bruce," and the arrangements for a coronation, were as much in his
thoughts as in the more hopeful days before Sherriff Muir and Preston.