e fields he
burned, so now its clans had but home-made claymores, bows, and arrows,
Lochaber _tuaghs_ and cudgels, with no heavy pieces. The cavalry of this
unholy gang was but three garrons, string and bone. Worse than their
ill-arming, as any soldier of experience will allow, were the jealousies
between the two bodies of the scratched-up army. Did ever one see a Gael
that nestled to an Irishman? Here's one who will swear it impossible,
though it is said the blood is the same in both races, and we nowadays
read the same Gaelic Bible. Colkitto MacDonald was Gael by birth
and young breeding, but Erinach by career, and repugnant to the most
malignant of the west clans before they got to learn, as they did
later, his quality as a leader. He bore down on Athole, he and his towsy
rabble, hoping to get the clans there to join him greedily for the sake
of the old feud against MacCailein Mor, but the Stewarts would have
nothing to say to him, and blows were not far off when Montrose and his
cousin Black Pate came on the scene with his king's licence.

To meet this array now playing havoc on the edge of Campbell country,
rumour said two armies were moving from the north and east: if Argile
knew of them he kept his own counsel on the point, but he gave colour
to the tale by moving from Inneraora with no more than 2000 foot and a
troop of horse. These regimentals had mustered three days previously,
camping on the usual camping-ground at the Maltland, where I spent
the last day and night with them. They were, for the main part, the
Campbells of the shire: of them alone the chief could muster 5000
half-merkland men at a first levy, all capable swordsmen, well drilled
and disciplined _soldadoes_, who had, in addition to the usual schooling
in arms of every Gael, been taught many of the niceties of new-fashioned
war, countermarch, wheeling, and pike-drill. To hear the orders,
"Pouldron to pouldron; keep your files; and middlemen come forth!" was
like an echo from my old days in Germanie. These manoeuvres they were
instructed in by hired veterans of the Munro and Mackay battalions who
fought with Adolphus. Four or five companies of Lowland soldiers from
Dunbarton and Stirling eked out the strength; much was expected from the
latter, for they were, unlike our clansmen, never off the parade-ground,
and were in receipt of pay for their militant service; but as events
proved, they were MacCailein's poor reed.

I spent, as I have said, a d