general
camp of the Highlanders at Strath-Fillan.* The low-country men succeeded
in getting possession of the boats at a great expenditure of noise and
courage, and little risk of danger.

* Note C. The Loch Lomond Expedition.

After this temporary removal from his old haunts, Rob Roy was sent by the
Earl of Mar to Aberdeen, to raise, it is believed, a part of the clan
Gregor, which is settled in that country. These men were of his own
family (the race of the Ciar Mhor). They were the descendants of about
three hundred MacGregors whom the Earl of Murray, about the year 1624,
transported from his estates in Menteith to oppose against his enemies
the MacIntoshes, a race as hardy and restless as they were themselves.

But while in the city of Aberdeen, Rob Roy met a relation of a very
different class and character from those whom he was sent to summon to
arms. This was Dr. James Gregory (by descent a MacGregor), the patriarch
of a dynasty of professors distinguished for literary and scientific
talent, and the grandfather of the late eminent physician and
accomplished scholar, Professor Gregory of Edinburgh. This gentleman was
at the time Professor of Medicine in King's College, Aberdeen, and son of
Dr. James Gregory, distinguished in science as the inventor of the
reflecting telescope. With such a family it may seem our friend Rob could
have had little communion. But civil war is a species of misery which
introduces men to strange bed-fellows. Dr. Gregory thought it a point of
prudence to claim kindred, at so critical a period, with a man so
formidable and influential. He invited Rob Roy to his house, and treated
him with so much kindness, that he produced in his generous bosom a
degree of gratitude which seemed likely to occasion very inconvenient
effects.

The Professor had a son about eight or nine years old,--a lively, stout
boy of his age,--with whose appearance our Highland Robin Hood was much
taken. On the day before his departure from the house of his learned
relative, Rob Roy, who had pondered deeply how he might requite his
cousin's kindness, took Dr. Gregory aside, and addressed him to this
purport:--"My dear kinsman, I have been thinking what I could do to show
my sense of your hospitality. Now, here you have a fine spirited boy of a
son, whom you are ruining by cramming him with your useless
book-learning, and I am determined, by way of manifesting my great
good-will to you and yours, to take him with me a