service that day, but considering that he would have enough to do with his own work, he went to prepare his clan for the hour that was near at hand.
Dundee dismissed his staff for the time on various duties, and attended only by Grimond, sat down upon a knoll, from which he could see the whole plateau of Urrard--the drawn-out line of his own army beneath him, and the corresponding formation of the English troops in the distance. He read MacKay's prayer slowly and reverently, and then, letting the paper fall upon the grass, Dundee fell into a reverie. There was a day when he would have treated the prayer lightly, not because he had ever been a profane man, like Esau, but because he had no relish for soldiers who acted as chaplains.
To-day, with the lists of battle before his eyes, and the ordeal of last night still fresh in his experience, and his inexcusable cruelty to Jean, his heart was weighed with a sense of the tragedy of life and the tears of things. He was going to fight unto death for his king, but he was haunted by the conviction that William was a wiser and better monarch. MacKay and he were to cross swords, as before they had crossed words, and would ever cross principles, but he could not help confessing to himself that MacKay, in the service of the Prince of Orange, had for years been doing a more soldierly part than his, in hunting to the death Covenanting peasants. His Highlanders below, hungering for the joy of battle and the gathering of spoil, were brave and faithful, but they were little more than savages, and woe betide the land that lay beneath their sword; while the troops on the other side represented the forces of order and civilization, and though they might be routed that evening, they held the promise of final victory. Was it worth the doing, and something of which afterwards a man could be proud, to restore King James to Whitehall, and place Scotland again in the hands of the gang of cowards and evil livers, thieves and liars who had misgoverned it and shamefully treated himself? What a confused and tangled web life was, and who had eyes to decipher its pattern? He would live and die for the Stuarts, as Montrose had done before him; he could not take service under William, nor be partner with the Covenanters. He could do none otherwise, and yet, what a Scotland it would be under James, and what a miserable business for him to return to the hunt of the Covenanters!
The buoyancy of the morning had passed, and now his thoughts took a darker turn. MacKay, no doubt, had told the truth, for he was not capable of falsehood, but if those Englishmen were not agents of the English government, did it follow that they were clear of suspicion? There was some mystery about them, for if indeed they had been Cavalier gentlemen who had abandoned the English service, would they be so anxious to conceal themselves? Why should they refuse to let their names be known? They had come from Livingstone's regiment. Was it possible that they had been sent by him, and if so, for what end? It is the penalty of once yielding to distrust that a person falls into the habit of suspicion, and the latent jealousy of Livingstone began to work like poison in Dundee's blood. Jean was innocent, he would stake his life on that, but Livingstone--who knew whether the attraction of those interviews was Dundee's cause or Dundee's wife? If Livingstone had been in earnest, he had been with King James's men that day; but he might be earnest enough in love, though halting enough in loyalty. If her husband fell, he would have the freer course in wooing the wife. What if he had arranged the assassination, and not William's government; what if Jean, outraged by that reflection upon her honor and infuriated by wounded pride, had consented to this revenge? Her house had never been scrupulous, and love changed to hate by an insult such as he had offered might be satisfied with nothing less than blood. Stung by this venomous thought, Dundee sprang to his feet, and looking at the westering sun, cried to Grimond, who had been watching him with unobtrusive sympathy, as if he read his thoughts, "Jock, the time for thinking is over, the time for doing has come."
He