long till we were menaced
with new and even greater sufferings than we had yet endured. For though
the tyrant had fled, he had left Claverhouse, under the title of
Viscount Dundee, behind him; and in the fearless activity of that proud
and cruel warrior, there was an engine sufficient to have restored him
to his absolute throne, as I shall now proceed to rehearse.

CHAPTER XC

The true and faithful of the West, by the event recorded in the
foregoing chapter, being so instructed with respect to their own power
and numbers, stood in no reverence of any force that the remnants of the
Tyrant's sect and faction could afford to send against them. I therefore
resolved to return to Edinburgh; for the longing of my grandfather's
spirit to see the current and course of public events flowing from their
fountain-head, was upon me, and I had not yet so satisfied the yearnings
of justice as to be able to look again on the ashes of my house and the
tomb of Sarah Lochrig and her daughters. Accordingly, soon after the
turn of the year I went thither, where I found all things in uncertainty
and commotion.

Claverhouse, or, as he was now titled, Lord Dundee, with that scorn of
public opinion and defect of all principle, save only a canine fidelity,
a dog's love, to his papistical master, domineered with his dragoons, as
if he himself had been regnant monarch of Scotland; and it was plain and
probable, that unless he was soon bridled, he would speedily act upon
the wider stage of the kingdom the same Mahound-like part that he had
played in the prenticeship of his cruelties of the shire of Ayr. The
peril, indeed, from his courage and activity, was made to me very
evident, by a conversation that I had with one David Middleton, who had
come from England on some business of the Jacobites there, in connection
with Dundee.

Providence led me to fall in with this person one morning, as we were
standing among a crowd of other onlookers, seeing Claverhouse reviewing
his men in the front court of Holyrood-house. I happened to remark, for
in sooth it must be so owned, that the Viscount had a brave though a
proud look, and that his voice had the manliness of one ordained to
command.

"Yes," replied David Middleton, "he is a born soldier, and if the King
is to be restored, he is the man that will do it. When his Majesty was
at Rochester, before going to France, I was there with my master, and
being called in to mend the fire, I heard Dund