a singular one on the part of the young man.
It was the customary plan to intermarry with some of the neighbouring
clans; nor was it permitted for the chieftain to make a choice without
having first ascertained how far the clan were agreeable to his wishes.
This usage proceeded, in part, from the notion of consanguinity between
every member of a clan, even of the lowest degree, to his chieftain, and
the affability and courtesy with which the head was in the habit of
treating those over whom he ruled. The clans were even known to carry
their interference with the affairs of their chief so far as to
disapprove of the choice of their abodes, or to select a site for a new
residence.[248]

The sway which Sir Ewan Dhu had acquired over his followers was such
that he dispensed with the ordinary practice, and, without the consent
of the clans, agreed to receive the young Quakeress as his daughter. The
marriage was completed, and eventually received the full approbation of
the whole clan Cameron.

Meantime, great efforts had been made on the part of the English
Government to detach Sir Ewan Dhu from his faith to James the Second.
But the monarch who could attempt so hopeless a task as the endeavour to
cause a Highlander to break his oath of fidelity, very faintly
comprehended the national character, then existing in all its strength
and all its weakness,--in its horror of petty crimes and its
co-operation of great outrages,--in its small meannesses and lofty
generous traits,--in its abhorrence of a broken vow or of treachery to a
leader. The temptation offered was indeed considerable. Sir Ewan Dhu was
to have a pension of three hundred a-year, to be perpetuated to his son,
whom the Government were particularly anxious to entice back to
Scotland. The old chieftain was also to be appointed Governor of Fort
William.[249] But the emissaries of William the Third could not have
chosen a worse period than that in which to treat with the brave and
wary Cameron. The massacre of Glencoe was fresh in the remembrance of
the people, and the stratagem, the fiendish snares which had been
prepared to betray the unsuspecting Macdonalds to their destruction,
were also recalled with the deep curses of a wronged and slaughtered
people. The game of cards, the night before the massacre, between the
villain Campbell, and the two sons of Glencoe,--the proffered and
accepted hospitality of the chieftain, whose hand was grasped in seeming
friendliness