Chapter LIV: The Final Attempt of Athole

It was the Lammas now of 1724, when the gool or wild marigold began to make its appearance among the little corn patches on the sunny side of the Highland hills; and in this month the mother of Rob Roy (a daughter of the house of Glenfalloch), then in extreme old age, being nearly a century old, expired at Muirlaggan, the house which he had built for her.

Though her passing away had been long expected, her death was accompanied by the omens and mysterious warnings then and still so universally believed in among the Highlanders. Rob's grey staghounds howled mournfully the livelong night, a sure sign that they had seen what the eyes of men could not--the shadow of Death enter the house of Muirlaggan; and Paul Crubach, now aged, half-blind, and bent with years, averred that on last Midsummer-eve he had beheld her figure pass before him into the churchyard of Balquhidder with a shroud _high_ upon her breast, a certain token that her death was close at hand.

On the day preceding the funeral, and before the clan, tenants, and gillies assembled to drink the dredgie, he came close to the chair of Rob, who was seated at window, full of thought.

"Paul, you have been absent some days," said Rob kindly to the old man, "and at your years----"

"I have been on Inchcailloch, and there I spent three nights," said he, with unusual solemnity.

"Three dreary nights they must have been," said Rob, with a sad smile; "a ruined church for shelter and the graves of the dead below you."

"But I slept thereon, knowing that the dead would give me counsel just and true; and in my dreams there appeared unto me twice one whom I knew to be Dugald Ciar Mhor."

"How knew you this?"

"By his mouse-coloured hair and beard, and he told me--told me----"

"What--what?" asked Rob, impatiently; "oh, Paul--Paul--Dugald lies in his grave in Glenlyon."

"It matters not--he told us to _beware of Athole_!"

"Paul, is not this mockery, and at such a time? Beware of Athole? We have done little else for these twenty years past."

"Above the graves of the dead we get counsel just and true," repeated poor, old, half-witted Paul, ignorant that, sixteen centuries before, Pomponius Mela recorded a similar idea.

The escapes of Rob had been so numerous and so desperate that they became a byeword--a joke in the Highlands, where the people were wont to say,--"You might as well attempt to say MacNab thrice with your mouth shut as attempt to catch Rob Roy;" and believing himself to be singularly favoured by fortune in that matter, he paid but little attention to the warning of Paul till about sunset, when his son Ronald came running in bareheaded and breathless from a cattle-fold to announce that a party of soldiers were rapidly approaching the house!

The natural grief which Rob was enduring for the death of his mother turned into exasperation. He now kept fewer men about him than had been his wont in other times, and it chanced that, though some hundreds would muster for the funeral on the morrow, there were not ten in the house at this desperate crisis!

He buckled on his sword, thrust his loaded pistols in his belt, threw his target on his arm, kissed Helen and the babe Robin at her breast, and was rushing from the house to seek shelter on the hills, when the Duke of Athole, with two hundred and fifty of his tenantry, all mounted and armed with sword, pistol, and musketoon, drew up before the door.

Keeping his hand on his sword, Rob saluted the duke, saying, with that suave irony which a Highlander can so well assume,--

"I am obliged to your grace for coming unasked with such a goodly company to attend my mother's funeral. Glenfalloch and Breadalbane will alike deem it an honour which neither they nor I expected."

"I have not come here for any such purpose," replied Athole, haughtily, as he shook the long curls of his peruke, and kept his horse well in hand, while keenly eyeing every motion of MacGregor. "I have come but to crave the pleasure of your company so far as the Tolbooth of Perth, where we shall settle some old scores at leisure."

"Indeed!" said Rob, sternly. "Had I received sufficient notice of your grace's visit, we had met at the pass of Loch Ard, not at my own door, and I should have resorted to other means than temporising. Within that chamber, duke, lies my mother in her coffin--a woman old in years--yea, so old that she remembered the earliest days of Charles I., to whom your grandsire, Earl John of Athole, was a steadfast man mid true; so, should I die for it here upon the threshold, I shall neither yield nor go to Forth your prisoner; for now in death, as in life, my place shall be by my mother's side!"

"Enough of this," said Athole, coarsely; "the funeral may go on very well without you."

Taken at vantage, however, Rob gradually perceived that he could gain nothing by resistance; and, as the duke dismounted, and stood by the bridle of his horse, he affected to comply with his wish. Then shrill screams and cries of lamentation rose from the women of the tribe, great numbers of whom had already assembled at Muirlaggan; and within the doorway of the house were seen the dark and scowling faces of men, with the gleam of arms, as swords and skenes were drawn and muskets loaded; for there Greumoch, Alaster Roy, and Rob's sons, Coll, Duncan, Hamish, and Ronald, prepared, like brave youths, to defend or die beside him.

A babel of hoarse and guttural Gaelic tongues rang on all sides, and many of the duke's yeomanry had unsheathed their swords and unslung their musketoons preparatory to carrying off the prisoner.

The voices of his sons, the lamentations of the women, thoughts of Helen with the babe at her breast, and his mother lying dead in her coffin, filled MacGregor's soul with desperation. Thrusting aside by main strength of arm half a dozen of the troopers who had begirt him, he drew forth his claymore, and called upon them all to stand back--back, upon their lives!

On this, snatching a pistol from his holsters, Athole fired it full at the head of Rob, who at the same moment fell to the ground. He had only slipped a foot, but on seeing him fall a mingled yell pierced the welkin, and before the smoke had cleared away, the duke found himself in the grasp of a woman.

This was a sister of Rob, who had married her cousin Glenfalloch. A strong and active woman, of a fiery and affectionate temper, on seeing her brother fall, she believed he was killed, and making a furious spring at Athole, clutched his throat with such energy that his grace was soon speechless. He reeled and staggered, while his followers, none of whom dared to use their pistol-butts or clenched hands to a lady, were unable to release him, till Rob seized his sister's wrist, and rescued him. On this the lady fainted.

This strange and unseemly scuffle fortunately caused some delay. For a time the duke was unable to mount his horse; and ere he did so, the mustering MacGregors, summoned by Greumoch, Paul, and the shrieking women, from farm and clachan, came pouring in with brandished swords and axes in such numbers that Colonel Grahame, who was present, deeming discretion the better part of valour, seized the duke's horse by the bridle, and gave the order to retire as fast as possible.

Rob permitted Athole to do so unmolested, and now, for a time, the house of Muirlaggan, where the dead woman lay, presented that which was not uncommon then in the Highlands in cases of either sorrow or joy, a scene of fearful wrath and noisy uproar.

Had Athole come next day, he might have experienced a warmer reception; for when Glengyle came in, more than seven hundred armed men, with twenty pipers, attended the funeral, and thus the old lady was born to her long home by her four grandsons; for in the Highlands it was ever a boy's pride, and one of the tests of manhood, to be permitted to act as bearer of a coffin, perhaps for many miles over steep and rugged mountain-paths.

On this occasion, Paul Crubach stumbled and fell on his face as the funeral procession approached the church of Balquhidder, _deisail_-wise, and then the old superstition was whispered, that he who stumbled at a burial was certain to be the _next_ whose coffin would be borne that way; and this was fully realized when poor old Paul was found dead in bed next morning.

The duke never again had an opportunity of molesting Rob Roy, as on the 14th November of this year his grace paid the debt of nature at his castle of Blair, in Athole.