Montrose knew the temper of the men who now ruled Scotland too well to share in the delusions that had brought Charles into their power. From the Scottish to the English camp would prove, he felt certain, but a short step. As clearly as we see it now, though from a different point of view, he saw that the time for compromise was past, and that on one side or the other the victory must be absolute and unconditional. But though right in his conviction that peace could only be won at the sword's point, Montrose did not recognise that the power of the sword had passed for ever from the King. He even flattered himself that the tide was on the turn at the very moment when he had been ordered to lay down his arms, and that a few weeks would have seen all the Royalists in Scotland united as one man to rescue their sovereign from the cruel and treacherous hands into which he had fallen. It was a delusion as complete as the delusion of Charles. He might, indeed, have continued a desultory campaign among the mountains so long as he remained alive and free; he might have indulged the King with another Kilsyth, or the Macdonalds with another Inverlochy; but no man living, not Oliver himself, could have succeeded where Montrose had failed. Statesman and soldier had alike been powerless to persuade or compel those unstable chiefs and their wild followers to the order, discipline, and concord necessary to ensure success in all military operations. In another generation another Graham had to face the same problem; but Dundee, more fortunate than his kinsman, was saved from the same failure by a glorious death on the field of battle.

And yet the course of Scottish affairs during the next two years seems at first to suggest that the genius of Montrose might have guided them to different issues. The jealousy and irresolution of Huntly must always have paralysed every effort that he might permit to assist him. But the strange outburst of popular feeling which culminated in the abortive enterprise known as Hamilton's Engagement, might under a vigorous and skilful leader have at least saved the King's life. There was no such leader then in Scotland save Montrose alone. Yet the certainty of victory under Montrose would never have tempted the men who cheerfully followed Hamilton to inevitable defeat. It may be true that Lanark professed himself willing to serve under Montrose in the capacity even of a sergeant; but the words, if sincere, were not spoken till after the annihilation of his party, when he was himself a fugitive and his brother a prisoner. At the time when Hamilton dared to make a stand against the tyranny of Argyll, Montrose, outside the little circle of his own friends and followers, was the object of general aversion to all Scotland. Royalists like Huntly and trimmers like Traquair were jealous of him. The extreme Covenanters, headed by Argyll and including the large majority of the clergy, hated him with the deadly hatred that only fear can inspire. By the more moderate Presbyterians, who now called themselves Royalist, he was distrusted as a renegade from the Covenant and the champion, as they conceived him, of Episcopacy. Nor did they even call their cause the same. The restoration of the monarchy was their rallying cry as it had been his; but while they were arming against an English foe, his victories had been won against his own countrymen. The cruelties practised in the name of the Covenant had excited no indignation; for they had been practised in remote parts of the kingdom either on men who were regarded as little better than wild beasts, or on men who were fighting against the sacred cause of religion and liberty. Even the butchery after Philiphaugh was but the just vengeance of God. But thousands of homes had been left desolate, and thousands of innocent lives lost, to gratify the vain and furious ambition of Montrose. Such in times of disorder will always be the reasoning of the stronger side. It is possible, indeed, that the enthusiasm of these new Royalists was in some degree due to the feeling that it would not be forced to submit to the dictation of a man whose ways were not theirs. Only among the Highlanders could Montrose have found allies, and among their mountains was his only battle-ground. They knew nothing of Kirk or Covenant, of Presbyterian or Independent. The men of Macdonald bore no grudge against the destroyer of the Campbells; the men of Athole would have heard without a murmur that every Mackenzie had been put to the sword from Kintail to Loch Broom. They did not care, probably the majority did not know, for what they had been marching, plundering, and fighting from Aberdeen to Inverary. They knew only that they were following a captain who led them always to revenge and booty. But in the Lowlands Montrose had no party, and to the Lowlands his allies would not follow him. It is a hard thing to say, but it is the plain truth, that all his brilliant exploits, his dauntless courage, his ardent and unselfish devotion to a noble, if mistaken, ideal had proved of no real service to his master. Had Strafford lived to join hands with Montrose the history of the Great Rebellion might have been differently written. But Montrose stood alone, the champion of a lost cause, the martyr of an impossible loyalty. All the circumstances of the time were against him, its spirit and its temper, its ideals and its convictions. At the moment when he was ordered to disband his forces, Montrose was the King's most dangerous ally.

The scene was now shifted from the Highlands of Scotland to the French capital, but the play was the same. Here Montrose had expected to find the promised instructions from the King and the necessary credentials, but if they ever reached Paris they never came into his hands. His plan for renewing the war had been already submitted to the Queen, and had received her gracious approval. But fair words were all he was to get from Henrietta Maria. Help she would not, or could not give. Money was scarce among the exiles; the Queen was extravagant and her courtiers greedy. She did nothing without the advice of Jermyn, and the advice of the favourite was never given against his own interests. He kept the purse, and would allow no strange fingers in it. Not a pistole could be spared from the maintenance and amusements of the little household for the wild schemes of an enthusiast who could no longer be useful and might prove troublesome. At such a court Montrose could not be welcome. Nor does his own behaviour seem to have been altogether judicious. He was accused of setting too high a claim on his past services, of a manner unbecoming a subject in the presence of his Queen; and the publication of Wishart's narrative of his exploits, which might indeed have been postponed to a more favourable time, is said to have been seriously resented, as likely to offend the Presbyterian party to whom the Royalists were now turning for help. So ran the gossip of the time, perhaps not entirely without reason. Montrose had always worn his heart upon his sleeve. For the King's sake he was ready to undergo every hardship, to submit to every indignity. But it was not in his nature to waive what he considered his just claims before men who had sat idle while he fought, and now rejected him when he had failed. He may well have been galled to see these proud carpet-knights preferred to those who had borne the burden and heat of the day, to find himself and his faithful followers slighted and in want, while money was freely lavished on the Queen's French servants and English favourites.

But though Montrose won no honour among his own countrymen, his pride might have been soothed by the admiration he excited elsewhere. He was the first person whom visitors to Paris desired to see. De Retz begged for the honour of an interview, praised him everywhere, and introduced him to Mazarin. The Cardinal at once offered him high employment and liberal pay, and promised more. But Montrose had no taste for the French service, nor belief in the Cardinal's promises. He thought that he might serve both his King and himself better at the Austrian Court. In the spring of 1648, after one more attempt to gain the Queen to his side, and finding her now pledged to the Presbyterian alliance, he left Paris and, travelling through Switzerland and the Tyrol, came to the Emperor at Prague.

Ferdinand received him graciously, conferred on him the baton of a field-marshal, and lent a ready ear to his plans. Montrose was commissioned to levy regiments for his King in Flanders, and furnished with letters of recommendation to the Emperor's brother Leopold, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. His reception by the Archduke, whom he found at Tournay, was no less gracious; but the crushing defeat inflicted by CondÉ on the Imperial forces at Lens made any active aid from this quarter impossible, and Montrose went on to join his friends at Brussels.

The Prince of Wales had now broken from the irksome bondage of his mother and Jermyn, and was settled at the Hague with Sir Edward Hyde for his Chancellor. There, too, were his brother the Duke of York, and his aunt Elizabeth of Bohemia, the gifted and unfortunate Queen of Hearts, with her son Prince Rupert. With the latter Montrose at once opened a correspondence. Rupert answered cordially, but his new duties as Admiral of the Fleet left him, he said, no present leisure for an interview. At the Hague, as at Paris, Montrose had his enemies. One friend, indeed, supported him with all the ardour of a brave and generous woman. Between the nature of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the nature of Montrose there was much in common, and the warm sympathy that sprang up between these two noble spirits forms the one pleasant incident of this dark and miserable time.[22] But the rest, though more gracious than their countrymen in Paris, still held aloof. The complete and ignominious failure of Hamilton's Engagement had poured a fresh body of exiles into Holland, who persisted in assuring the Prince that only through Presbyterian Scotland could salvation come, and in warning him against the employment of a man so universally detested as Montrose. Charles was, on one side at least, the true son of his father. He was determined to keep friends with both parties, and to commit himself to neither. But for the present it was clearly not his interest to offend the Presbyterians, who had the advantage of numbers and were moreover on the spot. Hyde was therefore commissioned to hold a secret interview with Montrose, and was on the point of leaving the Hague for that purpose, when a fresh and terrible turn was given to affairs by the news of the King's execution.

Wishart tells us that on the receipt of the intelligence Montrose fell down in a swoon. On recovering he broke into passionate exclamations of grief, declaring that there was nothing now left for him in life. His chaplain, in the spirit rather of the Cavalier than the clergyman, reminded him that vengeance was still left, and that the murdered King's son still lived. "It is so," answered Montrose; "and therefore I swear before God, angels, and men, that I will dedicate the remainder of my life to avenging the death of the royal martyr, and re-establishing his son upon his father's throne." He then retired to his room, and would see no one for two days. On the third morning, Wishart, being admitted, found that the Marquis had embodied his vow in the following lines, which may be admired for their passion if not for their elegance:

A new element was now added to the factions which seethed round the little Court at the Hague. Charles the Second had been proclaimed in Edinburgh immediately on the news of his father's death, and commissioners now arrived from the Estates to dictate to him, whom they had just acknowledged as their King, the sole conditions under which he could be allowed to enter his kingdom. The Estates meant Argyll; the chief commissioners were his sworn friends, Cassillis and Robert Baillie; the terms they offered were those the late King had lost his life by refusing. The moderate Presbyterians, the survivors of the Engagement, were represented by Lanark and Lauderdale. As they were now outcasts equally with Montrose, it might have been thought that they would make common cause with him against the common enemy. The King used all his courtliest arts to effect a reconciliation which might give him the power of dictating instead of accepting terms; but his arguments and entreaties were alike vain. Sworn foes on all other points, Engagers and Covenanters were at one in their denunciation of the bloody murderer James Graham. Among the former the bitterest was Lauderdale, whose name was destined to become a byword throughout Scotland for brutality. Hyde attempted to reason with him. He was told that it was in the nature of such a war as had lately raged in Scotland to give no quarter on either side; he was reminded that Montrose had never been guilty of such deliberate cruelties as his adversaries had freely perpetrated, that he had taken no man's life in cold blood, nor ever broken his faith with a prisoner. That Hyde spoke truth Lauderdale could not deny, but the truth mattered nothing. He swore passionately that, greatly as he desired the King's restoration, he would rather that it should never be effected, than effected with the help of this cruel and inhuman James Graham. How much of this indignation was sincere, and how much assumed as a cloak for the intrigues of faction, it would be hard to say. That there was a deep and widespread feeling in Scotland against Montrose is certain; but it is difficult to believe that pity for human suffering can at any time have strongly moved such a man as Lauderdale. The rest of the party followed his lead. They would not meet Montrose in council; they would not stay in the royal presence when he came into it; they desired the King not to permit Wishart to preach before him, on the ostensible grounds that he, like Montrose, was under the ban of the Kirk, but in reality because he was Montrose's chaplain and had written a narrative of his exploits. This foolish and insolent violence had the natural effect. Charles turned to Montrose, and frankly asked for his advice on the commissioners' proposals. It was as frankly given. The King was warned that his hereditary right of succession was being changed for "a conditional election of ans and ifs" which must inevitably leave him a mere tool in the hands of Argyll and the Kirk; that to sign their Solemn League and Covenant would be to condemn his father's memory by countenancing the origin of the rebellion that had cost him his kingdom and life. He was reminded that the very men who had proclaimed him King were even now slandering, persecuting, and murdering his faithful subjects whose only crime was loyalty to the Throne. Finally he was recommended to be resolute and bold, and to trust the justice of his cause to God. The disease was gone too far for gentle remedies; in vigorous and active measures lay the only human means of success. And such measures Montrose was ready to undertake so soon as the King should sanction them. The suspicious nature of that loyalty which shouted God save the King! while it struck at the King's most faithful subjects was an argument that came home. The violent language used against Montrose added fresh point to it every day; and the same ship that brought the commissioners to the Hague brought also the news of Huntly's death. His brother-in-law Argyll had sent him to the scaffold, pathetically lamenting with his last breath that he had done so little in the cause for which he suffered.

It was the misfortune of Montrose to serve two masters who could never be trusted. As the father had been, so was the son. Charles knew that part of this advice was good; that if he accepted the conditions of the Estates he could be a king only in name; and he must have had a shrewd suspicion that, while Cromwell was master in England, he would not long even in name be king in Scotland. That he believed at this time in the chance of vigorous action is not impossible. The infatuation of exiles is proverbial, and there were undoubtedly others besides Montrose who shared his views. It would be unjust therefore to brand Charles with the deliberate treachery of sending a brave man to inevitable death. But he could not resist the attractions of that double game which had led his father to the block. If Montrose succeeded, Charles would be free for ever from the patronage of Kirk and Covenant; if he failed, these unwelcome allies might still be left to fall back upon. The terms of the Estates were therefore declined, but in such a way as to leave an opening for future negotiations; and a commission was issued appointing the Marquis of Montrose Lieutenant-Governor of Scotland and Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Forces, and at the same time Ambassador-Extraordinary to solicit aid from the Northern Courts in the name of the King of England.

Montrose at once set to work. Though the Powers on whose help he relied were more generous in compliments and promises than in substantial aid, he contrived by the end of August to despatch a small force, mostly Germans and Danes, under the Earl of Kinnoull, to the Orkneys. He had chosen these islands for the place of muster, partly because they belonged to the Earl of Morton, Kinnoull's uncle, who was believed to be well affected, and partly because he thought that the terror of his name might not have penetrated to that remote part of the kingdom. Kinnoull was ordered to establish his men at Kirkwall, and to occupy himself in levying and drilling the islanders till his chief joined him at the end of the year.

But the hand of fate was against this wild venture from the first. Morton and Kinnoull were both dead of a fever within a few weeks after they had met at Kirkwall. Sir James Douglas, Morton's brother, was sent to Denmark with a message to Montrose urging his immediate coming to Scotland. He need not wait to bring an army with him; his own presence in the country would at once raise twenty thousand men for the King's service. Kinnoull had found time, before the fatal sickness seized him, to announce his safe arrival, and to assure his chief that he was "gaped after with that expectation that the Jews look after their Messiah." All agreed that Scotland was weary of the bondage of the Covenant, and impatient for a deliverer. But Montrose had been advised that despatches were on their way from the King in Jersey, and had no choice but to wait for them. It were better for the reputation of Charles that those despatches had never been written. They contained, indeed, the George and riband of the Garter, with many flattering words; but they contained also words which, written on the eve of the fatal conference of Breda, and read, as we now read them, by the light of its results, convict the King, if not of deliberate treachery, at least of a cruel disregard of his general's honour and life. They told him of the reopened negotiations with the Covenant and of the approaching conference: they urged him to instant and vigorous action; and they assured him that nothing should be conceded on his sovereign's part which could offer the least impediment to his proceedings, or the least diminution of his authority. And all the while Charles knew well that the one inevitable condition, whatever else might be taken or left, without which no basis of an understanding with the Covenant was possible, must be the dismissal of James Graham from his service. Elizabeth of Bohemia, who knew her nephew's disposition too well, had always foreseen this risk. "I pray God keep the King in his constancy to you and his other true friends and servants," she had written to Montrose; and through all her letters to him ran the half-concealed warning that more danger was to be expected from this quarter than from his open foes. But Montrose, if he had ever shared the Queen's fears or remembered them now, had no eyes for any part of this cruel letter but that which counselled instant action. He had already, in default of his own presence, despatched another and much larger force to the Orkneys under Kinnoull's brother William Hay, who had now succeeded to the title. But again the fates were adverse. A violent storm arose on the passage; the greater part of the little fleet went down at sea, or was dashed to pieces on those rugged coasts; out of twelve hundred men only two hundred, with a few field-pieces, came safe to land. Montrose himself did not reach Kirkwall till the end of March, accompanied by many of his old officers and a small but eager body of gentlemen volunteers.

It is idle to say that the delay was fatal to the success of an enterprise which could never in any circumstances have succeeded. But it was fatal to the continuance of that feeling which had prompted the letter of Kinnoull and the message of Douglas. The feeling had never indeed, even since the execution of Charles, been such or so widespread as they persuaded themselves with the exaggeration in all ages characteristic of the supporters of a lost cause. But through the greater part of the year 1649 the courage and hopes of the ultra-Royalists or Cavalier party in Scotland undoubtedly stood higher than at any time since the days immediately following the battle of Kilsyth. A rising of the Mackenzies under Pluscardine, Seaforth's brother, had indeed been easily suppressed in the spring; but it showed that the flame once kindled by Montrose was not yet wholly dead. Along with this reviving loyalty, though separate from it, was a strong and growing dislike, even among those who had hitherto held aloof from the Engagers, against the tyranny of the extreme Covenanters, the men of the Solemn League, who were led by Argyll. The moderate Presbyterians who shared this dislike would have welcomed the restoration of the young King as gladly as the Cavaliers; but they were not prepared to welcome him on the same terms. It was the misfortune of the Cavaliers to confound this partial and calculating sentiment with their own unconditional loyalty; and of this mistake Montrose was the victim. It was a mistake of which Argyll was not slow to take advantage. His emissaries proclaimed everywhere that the desired restoration was to be accomplished, not by the brutal violence of the excommunicated traitor James Graham at the head of an army of foreign mercenaries and Highland savages, but by the peaceful and ready consent of the exiled King to the wishes of his loving subjects. Argyll had not been deceived in his estimate of Charles. When the conference met at Breda the King promised everything demanded of him. Montrose was given up with the rest. He was publicly ordered to lay down his arms, to disband his forces, to withdraw from the kingdom. He was told that the King would not forget his interests when in a position to remember them. At the same time the bearer of this cruel and unkingly order was privately instructed, with the characteristic duplicity of these unhappy Stuarts, to ascertain Montrose's strength before delivering it, and to withhold it if he should be found sufficiently strong to enable Charles to break his word with the Covenant when once safe in Scotland. These orders never reached Montrose; they were not indeed written till some days after his defeat and capture. When he landed at the head of his army in Scotland he was still acting in obedience to the King's commands.[23] But the mischief had been done. The declaration which he published immediately on landing was burned by the common hangman at the cross in Edinburgh. A counter-declaration was issued denouncing him in terms of the most scurrilous abuse, and calling upon all in whom the fear of their God, duty to their King, and love for their country, were not utterly extinguished, to aid in bringing this traitor to justice. Every pulpit in Scotland thundered curses on his head. Those who dared to speak a good word for him were flung into prison. From one end of the country to the other he was held up to execration as a wretch abhorred of God and man.

It is improbable that Montrose had ever allowed himself to reflect on the desperate hazard of his venture. He had never been apt to calculate the chances against him, and he was not likely to do so now. That he can have felt confident or even hopeful of success seems incredible to us. In his little army were indeed some stout soldiers, Danes and Germans, who, like all mercenaries, could be trusted to sell their lives dearly; but at least one half was composed of raw Orkney men, unused to arms and with little heart for a cause they can hardly have understood. Hurry and some of his old officers were still with him; and among the gentlemen volunteers were the Earl of Kinnoull, Viscount Frendraught, Sir James Douglas (Morton's brother), Sir William Hay of Dalgetty, Colonel James Hay of Naughton, Drummond of Balloch, Menzies of Pitfoddels, Ogilvy of Powrie. His only cavalry consisted of the horses which carried himself, his principal officers, and some of the volunteers. The whole force did not exceed fifteen hundred men with a few brass field-pieces. He hoped indeed to find allies as he advanced, especially among the Mackenzies, whose chief, the vacillating Seaforth, though he preferred to stay by the King's side, had sanctioned a rising of his clan. But past experience can hardly have encouraged him to count much on such hopes. On the other hand, he knew that his old antagonist, David Leslie, was arrayed against him, and that though the Scottish army had been nominally disbanded it had only been quartered about the country ready for muster at a day's notice. Yet the orders issued to his officers were as firm and confident as ever. They are such, indeed, as almost to suggest a doubt whether his mind was able to realise the full gravity of his position. We read in them of life-guards and regiments and squadrons, as though he had the full complement of a regular army at his disposal. The truth is, that his ardent and romantic imagination, which had always seemed to belong rather to some knight-errant of the Middle Ages than to a man of the modern world, was now exalted to a height of enthusiasm whence all things looked possible. He conceived himself to stand before the eyes of Europe as the peculiar champion of fallen and insulted monarchy. Resolute as he was to obey his sovereign's commands in all matters of life and death, the thought of avenging the father was probably even nearer his heart than the thought of restoring the son. The standards he had caused to be prepared for his expedition indicate the spirit in which it was undertaken. The royal banner displayed a bleeding head upon a black ground. On his own, wrought of white damask, were embroidered two rocks divided by a deep chasm; on the top of one a lion crouched for the spring, and beneath was the motto, Nil Medium. It was his favourite boast:

The spirit of devotion to a cause, a creed, or a principle, which counts no cost, knows no fear, and will brook no compromise, has always been called by those who cannot understand it, and by those who dislike its object, the spirit of fanaticism. It can take many shapes, from Christian meekness and heroic valour to uncouth extravagance and savage ferocity. It inspired alike the martyrs of the early Church, the warriors of the Crusades, the priests of the Inquisition, and the troopers of Cromwell. Such was the spirit that now led Montrose to his doom.

In the second week of April he broke up his camp at Kirkwall and crossed to the mainland. His landing was effected at a point on the north-eastern extremity of Caithness, where tradition still preserves the memory of John o' Groat's House. He had already despatched a party of men to seize and garrison the strong castle of Dunbeath in order to secure his retreat, and with his little force now reduced to twelve hundred men he moved slowly south. In the shires of Caithness, Sutherland, and Ross he had expected to find willing recruits among men who had known nothing of the horrors of the last campaign, and he supposed that the whole array of the Mackenzies would be marching to meet him under the gallant Pluscardine. He was grievously disappointed in both hopes. His conciliatory letter to the Sheriff of Caithness produced no response, and as he advanced the inhabitants fled everywhere in terror before him. He crossed the Ord into Sutherlandshire to meet the same reception. When he reached Invercarron at the head of the Firth of Dornoch, he had not been joined by a single ally.

Meanwhile the Earl of Sutherland had mustered his vassals. He did not dare to give battle, but falling back before Montrose intercepted all communications from the south. At the first news of war Colonel Strachan, a Covenanter of the straitest sect, who had distinguished himself in the previous year by his vigorous suppression of the Mackenzies, had been sent north with a strong body of cavalry, while Leslie himself made all haste to his support with three thousand foot. When Strachan and Sutherland met, it was agreed to attack at once. The latter was sent round with his own men to secure the passes into the hills, while Strachan with his cavalry moved up the south side of the Firth upon the royal camp.

It was Saturday, April 27th. Montrose had heard of the advance, but his scouts had seen only a single weak troop of horse. Strachan had divided his force into three divisions; one he led straight forward upon the enemy, the others he kept out of sight among the wooded and broken ground on either side of his main advance. Montrose was deceived. He sent his few horse forward under Hurry, and drew up his foot on a piece of flat exposed ground at the head of the Firth. It was Philiphaugh over again. The enemy were upon him before he was aware of their strength. He at once ordered his foot to retreat to a rough and wooded hill at the rear of their position. Before they could reach it the cavalry was among them. The wretched islanders fled without firing a shot. The Germans fought bravely, but were ridden down right and left by the troopers; within two hours they were all killed, taken prisoners, or drowned in flight across the Firth. The rout was complete. Douglas, Ogilvy, Menzies (who bore the royal standard), were dead; Hurry and most of the surviving officers were prisoners. Wounded and dismounted Montrose still fought on for life or death, when young Frendraught, himself covered with wounds, pressed to his side with the offer of his own horse. It was little matter what became of him, said the gallant lad, so long as his Majesty's general was safe. Montrose leaped into the saddle, and followed by Kinnoull and a few others galloped off to the hills. Frendraught surrendered, and was committed to the care of his uncle Sutherland at Dunrobin. The pursuit was maintained till dark, and for many days afterwards the country people hunted out and slew the unfortunate Orkneymen till it was said that there was not a family in the islands which had not to mourn a son or a brother. Within the present century the place of slaughter was popularly known by a Gaelic name signifying the Rock of Lamentation.

The little band of fugitives soon separated. There was no safety in numbers, and the ground was unfit for horsemen. Montrose dismounted, threw away his cloak, star, and sword, exchanged clothes with a peasant, and, accompanied only by Kinnoull and an Orkney gentleman named Sinclair, struck off into the heart of the mountainous wilderness that forms the western part of Sutherlandshire. His design was to make for his garrison in Caithness, whence, should the disaster prove irretrievable, he might escape to the Continent. But neither he nor his companions knew the country. For two days and nights they wandered aimlessly up the Oikel river without food or shelter. On the third day Kinnoull's strength failed him, and he lay down to die. His companions must have shared the same fate, had they not come at evening to a little cottage where they were supplied with bread and milk. Through the night and the next day they pressed on, ignorant of their course, but supposing at least that they were leaving their enemies behind them. They were in truth heading straight for the toils. The direction of their flight had been betrayed by the discovery of Montrose's star and sword, and word sent into Assynt to be on the watch, with promise of reward to whomsoever should take James Graham alive. The fugitives were discovered in the last extremity of hunger and brought to the Laird's house at Ardvrech. The Macleods of Assynt had long been followers of the Earls of Sutherland with whose family they were connected by marriage, and Neil Macleod, the present Laird, had been recently appointed the Earl's Deputy-Sheriff of that district. From such a man at such a time a fugitive Royalist with a price upon his head had little to hope for. Montrose tried at first to buy his captor's favour, then, finding this useless, prayed at least for death rather than to be delivered alive into his enemies' hands. To prayers and bribes Macleod was alike inexorable. The great news was at once despatched to Leslie, who hurried north with a strong body of soldiers to secure the prize. Argyll had won the last move in the deadly game; Montrose was the prisoner of the Covenant.[24]