onvention and waited till he
returned. That was how Claverhouse lived to fight the battle of
Killiecrankie, but till that day came he had never been so near death
as in that narrow way of Edinburgh.

Dundee was not a prudent man, and he was very fearless, but for once
he consulted common-sense and made ready to leave Edinburgh. It was
plain that the Convention would elect William to the throne of
Scotland, and as the days passed it was also very bitter to him that
the Jacobites were not very keen about the rising. When he learned
that his trusted friends were going to attend the Convention, and did
not propose with undue haste to raise the standard for the king,
Dundee concluded that if anything should be done, it would not be by
such cautious spirits. As he seemed to be the sole hope of his cause,
the sooner he was out of Edinburgh the better. When he was seen upon
the street with fifty of his troopers, mounted and armed, there was a
wild idea of arresting him, but it came to nothing. There was not time
to gather the hillmen together, and there was no heart in the others
to face this desperate man and his body-guard. With his men behind
him, he rode down Leith Wynd unmolested, and when someone cried,
"Where art thou going, Lord Dundee?" he turned him round in the saddle
and answered, "Whither the spirit of Montrose will lead me." A
fortnight later, in front of his house at Dudhope, he raised the
standard for King James, and Jean Cochrane, a mother now, holding
their infant son in her arms, stood by his side before he rode north.
As he had left her on their marriage day with his troopers, so now he
left her and their child, to see her only once again--a cruel meeting,
before he fell. Verily, a life of storm and stress, of bitter
conflicts and many partings. Verily, a man whom, right or wrong, the
fates were treating as a victim and pursuing to his doom.

CHAPTER III

THE LAST BLOW

It is said that those stories are best liked which present a hero
and sing his achievements from beginning to end. And the more
faultless and brilliant the hero, the better goes the tale, and the
louder the applause. Certainly John Graham is the central figure in
this history, and so rich is the color of the man and so intense
his vitality, that other personages among whom he moves become pale
and uninteresting. They had, if one takes the long result, a larger
share in affairs, and their hand stretches across the centuries,
but