The true and faithful of the West, by the event recorded in the foregoing chapter, being so instructed with respect to their own power and numbers, stood in no reverence of any force that the remnants of the Tyrant's sect and faction could afford to send against them. I therefore resolved to return to Edinburgh; for the longing of my grandfather's spirit to see the current and course of public events flowing from their fountain-head, was upon me, and I had not yet so satisfied the yearnings of justice as to be able to look again on the ashes of my house and the tomb of Sarah Lochrig and her daughters. Accordingly, soon after the turn of the year I went thither, where I found all things in uncertainty and commotion.

Claverhouse, or, as he was now titled, Lord Dundee, with that scorn of public opinion and defect of all principle, save only a canine fidelity, a dog's love, to his papistical master, domineered with his dragoons, as if he himself had been regnant monarch of Scotland; and it was plain and probable, that unless he was soon bridled, he would speedily act upon the wider stage of the kingdom the same Mahound-like part that he had played in the prenticeship of his cruelties of the shire of Ayr. The peril, indeed, from his courage and activity, was made to me very evident, by a conversation that I had with one David Middleton, who had come from England on some business of the Jacobites there, in connection with Dundee.

Providence led me to fall in with this person one morning, as we were standing among a crowd of other onlookers, seeing Claverhouse reviewing his men in the front court of Holyrood-house. I happened to remark, for in sooth it must be so owned, that the Viscount had a brave though a proud look, and that his voice had the manliness of one ordained to command.

"Yes," replied David Middleton, "he is a born soldier, and if the King is to be restored, he is the man that will do it. When his Majesty was at Rochester, before going to France, I was there with my master, and being called in to mend the fire, I heard Dundee and my Lord, then with the King, discoursing concerning the royal affairs.

"'The question,' said Lord Dundee to his Majesty, 'is, whether you shall stay in England or go to France? My opinion, sir, is, that you should stay in England, make your stand here, and summon your subjects to your allegiance. 'Tis true, you have disbanded your army, but give me leave, and I will undertake to get ten thousand men of it together, and march through all England with your standard at their head, and drive the Dutch before you;' and," added David Middleton, "let him have time, and I doubt not, that, even without the King's leave, he will do as much."

Whether the man in this did brag of a knowledge that he had not, the story seemed so likely, that it could scarcely be questioned; so I consulted with my faithful friend and companion, Quintin Fullarton, and other men of weight among the Cameronians; and we agreed, that those of the societies who were scattered along the borders to intercept the correspondence between the English and Scottish Jacobites, should be called into Edinburgh to daunt the rampageous insolence of Claverhouse.

This was done accordingly; and from the day that they began to appear in the streets, the bravery of those who were with him seemed to slacken. But still he carried himself as boldly as ever, and persuaded the Duke of Gordon, then governor of the castle, not to surrender, nor obey any mandate from the Convention of the States, by whom, in that interregnum, the rule of the kingdom was exercised. Still, however, the Cameronians were coming in, and their numbers became so manifest, that the dragoons were backward to show themselves. But their commander affected not to value us, till one day a singular thing took place, which, in its issues, ended the overawing influence of his presence in Edinburgh.

I happened to be standing with Quintin Fullarton, and some four or five other Cameronians, at an entry-mouth forenent the Canongate-cross, when Claverhouse, and that tool of tyranny, Sir George Mackenzie the advocate, were coming up from the palace; and as they passed, the Viscount looked hard at me, and said to Sir George,—

"I have somewhere seen that doure cur before."

Sir George turned round also to look, and I said,—

"It's true, Claverhouse—we met at Drumclog;" and I touched my arm that he had wounded there, adding, "and the blood shed that day has not yet been paid for."

At these words he made a rush upon me with his sword, but my friends were nimbler with theirs; and Sir George Mackenzie interposing, drew him off, and they went away together.

The affair, however, ended not here. Sir George, with the subtlety of a lawyer, tried to turn it to some account, and making a great ado of it, as a design to assassinate Lord Dundee and himself, tried to get the Convention to order all strangers to remove from the town. This, however, was refused; so that Claverhouse, seeing how the spirit of the times was going among the members, and the boldness with which the presbyterians and the Covenanters were daily bearding his arrogance, withdrew with his dragoons from the city and made for Stirling.

In this retreat from Edinburgh he blew the trumpet of civil war; but in less than two hours from the signal, a regiment of eight hundred Cameronians was arrayed in the High-street. The son of Argyle, who had taken his seat in the Convention as a peer, soon after gathered three hundred of the Campbells, and the safety of Scotland now seemed to be secured by the arrival of Mackay with three Scotch regiments, then in the Dutch service, and which the Prince of Orange had brought with him to Torbay.

By the retreat of Claverhouse the Jacobite party in Edinburgh were so disheartened, and any endeavour which they afterwards made to rally was so crazed with consternation, that it was plain the sceptre had departed from their master. The capacity as well as the power for any effectual action was indeed evidently taken from them, and the ploughshare was driven over the ruins of their cause on the ever-memorable eleventh day of April, when William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen.

But though thus the oppressor was cast down from his throne, and though thus, in Scotland, the chief agents in the work of deliverance were the outlawed Cameronians, as instructed by me, the victory could not be complete, nor the trophies hung up in the hall, while the Tyrant possessed an instrument of such edge and temper as Claverhouse. As for myself, I felt that while the homicide lived the debt of justice and of blood due to my martyred family could never be satisfied; and I heard of his passing from Stirling into the Highlands, and the wonders he was working for the Jacobite cause there, as if nothing had yet been achieved toward the fulfilment of my avenging vow.