Scotland would not lift a hand for King James. He might be a commander-in-chief, but he was a commander of nobody; he might raise a standard, but it was only a vain show. It did not matter where he went or what he did; he was not a general, but a fugitive, a man to be neglected, and his following a handful of bandits. The rising was a thing to laugh at, and the report was current in the capital that he had absconded with one or two servants. This pretty description of his campaign had not reached his ears, but the humiliation of his situation burned into his proud heart. Much as he would have liked to meet MacKay, there remained for him no alternative but flight. Flight was the only word which could describe his journey, and as he planned his course on the morrow, how he would ride to Invergarry, and then return on his course, and then make his way to Cluny, he started to his feet and paced the room in a fury of anger. What better was he than a hare with the hounds after him, running for his life, and doubling in his track, fleeing here and dodging there, a cowering, timid, panting animal of the chase? "Damnation!" and Dundee flung himself out of the room, and paced up and down the side of the river.
There was a dim light upon the running water, and his thoughts turned to the West Country, to the streams he had often crossed and along whose bed he had sometimes ridden, as he hunted for his Covenanting prey. The Fates were just, for now the Whigs were the hunters and he was the hunted. He began to understand what it was to be ever on the alert for the approach of the enemy, to escape at the first sign of danger, to cross hills in full flight, and to be listening for the sound of the pursuer. As yet he had not to hide, but before many days were over he also may be skulking in moss-hags, and concealing himself in caves, and disguising himself in peasant's garments, he, John Graham of Claverhouse, and my Viscount of Dundee. The tables had turned with a vengeance, and the day of the godly had come. The hillmen would laugh when they heard of it, and the Conventicles would rejoice together. MacKay would be sitting in his quarters at Elgin that night making his plans also, but not for flight, and hardly for fighting. When officers arrest an outlaw, it is not called a battle any more than when hounds run a fox to his lair. MacKay would be arranging how to trap him, anticipating his ways of escape, and stopping all the earths, so that say, to-morrow, he might be quietly taken. It would not be a surrender; it would be a capture, and he would be sent to Edinburgh in charge of half a dozen English dragoons, and tried at Edinburgh, and condemned for treason against King William--King William.
They would execute him without mercy, and be only doing to him what he had done to the Whigs, and just as he had kept guard at Pollock's execution, that new Cameronian Regiment, of which there was much talk, would keep guard at his. There would be little cause for precaution; no one need fear a rescue, for the hillmen would be there in thousands with the other Whigs, to feast their eyes upon his shame, and cheer his death. He could not complain, for it would happen to him as it had to many of them, and what he had sown that would he reap. Would MacKay be laughing that night at Elgin, with his officers, and crying in his Puritanic cant, "Aha, aha, how is the enemy fallen and the mighty cast down! Where now is the boasting of his pride, where now is the persecutor of the saints?" No, far worse, MacKay would give orders in his cold, immovable manner, and treat the matter as of no account, as one who had never expected anything else from the beginning, and was only amazed at his opponent's madness. That was the inner bitterness of it all; they had taken their sides fifteen years ago; MacKay had chosen wisely, and he had chosen foolishly, as the world would say. The conflict had been inevitable, and it was quite as inevitable that his would be the losing side. William saw