, at the commander of the assailants, an
English officer, until, their ammunition running short, one of them
loaded his piece with the ball at the head of the tongs, and succeeded
in shooting the hitherto impenetrable captain. To accommodate Dundee's
fate to their own hypothesis, the Cameronian tradition runs, that, in
the battle of Killicrankie, he fell, not by the enemy's fire, but by the
pistol of one of his own servants, who, to avoid the spell, had loaded
it with a silver button from his coat. One of their writers argues thus:
"Perhaps, some may think this, anent proof-shot, a paradox, and be ready
to object here, as formerly concerning Bishop Sharpe and Dalziel--How
can the devil have, or give, power to save life? Without entering upon
the thing in its reality, I shall only observe, 1. That it is neither
in his power, or of his nature, to be a saviour of men's lives; he is
called Apollyon, the destroyer. 2. That, even in this case, he is said
only to give enchantment against one kind of metal, and this does not
save life: for, though lead could not take Sharpe and Claverhouse's
lives, yet steel and silver could do it; and, for Dalziel, though
he died not on the field, yet he did not escape the arrows of the
Almighty."--_God's Judgement against Persecutors._ If the reader be not
now convinced of _the thing in its reality_, I have nothing to add to
such exquisite reasoning.]

John Balfour of Kinloch, commonly called Burly, was one of the fiercest
of the proscribed sect. A gentleman by birth, he was, says his
biographer, "zealous and honest-hearted, courageous in every enterprise,
and a brave soldier, seldom any escaping that came in his hands." _Life
of John Balfour._ Creichton says, that he was once chamberlain to
Archbishop Sharpe, and, by negligence, or dishonesty, had incurred
a large arrear, which occasioned his being active in his master's
assassination. But of this I know no other evidence than Creichton's
assertion, and a hint in Wodrow. Burly, for that is his most common
designation, was brother-in-law to Hackston of Rathillet a wild
enthusiastic character, who joined daring courage, and skill in the
sword, to the fiery zeal of his sect. Burly, himself, was less eminent
for religious fervour than for the active and violent share which he had
in the most desperate enterprises of his party. His name does not appear
among the covenanters, who were denounced for the affair of Pentland.
But, in 1677, Robert Hami