utting on his clothes and calling to his servants to bring some
refreshment for his visitors, was shot through the head. Two of his
attendants were slain with him. His wife was already up and dressed in
such finery as the princesses of the rude Highland glens were accustomed
to wear. The assassins pulled off her clothes and trinkets. The rings
were not easily taken from her fingers but a soldier tore them away with
his teeth. She died on the following day.

The statesman, to whom chiefly this great crime is to be ascribed, had
planned it with consummate ability: but the execution was complete in
nothing but in guilt and infamy. A succession of blunders saved three
fourths of the Glencoe men from the fate of their chief. All the moral
qualities which fit men to bear a part in a massacre Hamilton and
Glenlyon possessed in perfection. But neither seems to have had much
professional skill; Hamilton had arranged his plan without making
allowance for bad weather, and this in a country and at a season when
the weather was very likely to be bad. The consequence was that the fox
earths, as he called them, were not stopped in time. Glenlyon and his
men committed the error of despatching their hosts with firearms instead
of using the cold steel. The peal and flash of gun after gun gave
notice, from three different parts of the valley at once; that murder
was doing. From fifty cottages the half naked peasantry fled under cover
of the night to the recesses of their pathless glen. Even the sons of
Mac Ian, who had been especially marked out for destruction, contrived
to escape. They were roused from sleep by faithful servants. John,
who, by the death of his father, had become the patriarch of the tribe,
quitted his dwelling just as twenty soldiers with fixed bayonets marched
up to it. It was broad day long before Hamilton arrived. He found the
work not even half performed. About thirty corpses lay wallowing in
blood on the dunghills before the doors. One or two women were seen
among the number, and, a yet more fearful and piteous sight, a little
hand, which had been lopped in the tumult of the butchery from some
infant. One aged Macdonald was found alive. He was probably too infirm
to fly, and, as he was above seventy, was not included in the orders
under which Glenlyon had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in cold
blood. The deserted hamlets were then set on fire; and the troops
departed, driving away with them many sheep and goat