Dundee was uneasy; he asked King James to send him considerable reinforcements. He waited through the month of June, encamped at Lochaber, until the forces of General Mackay, tired of pursuing him without coming up to him, retreated into the Lowlands. The castle of Edinburg, long held by the Duke of Gordon for King James, had just capitulated. The numerous dependents of the Marquis of Athole were waiting for him to declare himself; his eldest son, Lord Murray, had embraced King William's party; the confidential agent of the marquis, Stewart of Badenoch, served King James. Lord Murray had presented himself before Blair Castle. The garrison which occupied it, in behalf of his father, refused him admittance to the fortress. He had laid siege to it, when Dundee and all the Highland chiefs descended impetuously from the mountains to the relief of the garrison. The siege was raised when they arrived. Murray's soldiers had abandoned it; filling their caps with the water of a spring, they had drunk to the health of King James, and dispersed. But Mackay and his troops already occupied the defile of Killiecrankie, which led to the fortress. Dundee resolved to attack them. {27} The aged Lochiel moved to and fro among the ranks of the Highlanders, whose fierce cries the echoes repeated; while the tone of the enemy was feeble and faint. "We shall carry the day," said Lochiel; "that is not the cry of men about to conquer." He charged the enemy at the head of his clan with sword in hand, and bare feet, like his soldiers. A first discharge had not checked the forward motion of the Highlanders, and Mackay's soldiers were reloading their pieces, when the torrent of mountaineers came down upon them. Reeling, overthrown, deafened by the shouts, dazzled by the sheen of swords, the men threw away their muskets and began to fly. Mackay, intrepid in defeat, called to his aid his cavalry, dreaded by the mountaineers. Only Dundee could have rallied his troops, carried away by their eagerness to plunder. Dundee was dead in his glory, struck, it was told afterwards, by a silver button used as a ball and discharged at him by the superstition of the soldiers. "He is invulnerable to lead and iron," said the covenanters, who had not long ago seen him urging on his soldiers in the middle of a rain of balls. The intrepid soldier, the bold and skilful leader, the pitiless persecutor, had been mortally wounded while leading a small body of horse to the front. Falling from his charger, a soldier had received him in his arms. "How goes it?" asked Dundee. "Well for King James," answered the trooper, "but I grieve for your lordship." "Small matter about me, if things go well for him," murmured Dundee. These were his last words. His body, wrapped in the plaids of the Highlanders, was borne to Blair Castle. {28}