tially
with equal courage and interest for the French and against them, like
those two Scots who met for the first time at the camp-fire that
night, and whose fortunes were to the end of the chapter to be so
curiously intertwined. There was Collier, who afterwards became My
Lord Patmore; Rooke, who rose to be a major-general in the English
army; Hales, for many years Governor of Chelsea Hospital; Venner, the
son of one of Cromwell's soldiers, who had strange notions about a
fifth monarchy which was to be held by our Lord himself, but who was a
good fighting man; and some others who came to nothing and left no
mark. Two young Scots gentlemen were among the Englishmen, who were to
have a share in making history in their own country, and both to die
as generals upon the battle-field, the death they chiefly loved. Both
men were to suffer more than falls to the ordinary lot, and the life
of one, some part of whose story is here to be told, was nothing else
but tragedy. For the gods had bestowed upon him quick gifts of mind
and matchless beauty of face, and yet he was to be hated by his
nation, till his name has become a byword, and to be betrayed by his
own friends who were cowards or self-seekers, and to find even love,
like a sword, pierce his heart.

Scotland contains within it two races, and partly because their blood
is different and partly because the one race has lived in the open and
fertile Lowlands, and the other in the wild and shadowy Highlands, the
Celt of the North and the Scot of the south are well-nigh as distant
from each other as the east from the west. But among the Celts there
were two kinds in that time, and even unto this day the distinction
can be found by those who look for it. There was the eager and fiery
Celt who was guided by his passions rather than by prudence, who
struck first and reasoned afterwards, who was the victim of varying
moods and the child of hopeless causes. He was usually a Catholic in
faith, so far as he had any religion, and devoted to the Stuart
dynasty, so far as he had any policy apart from his chief. There was
also another sort of Celt, who was quiet and self-contained,
determined and persevering. Men of this type were usually Protestant
in their faith, and when the day of choice came they threw in their
lot with Hanover against Stuart. Hugh MacKay was the younger son of an
ancient Highland house of large possessions and much influence in the
distant North of Scotland; his p