It appears, however, that Frendraught had not passively yielded to these assaults. On a hership of goods being taken away in September, ‘he with some horsemen followed sharply, and brought back his haill goods again but strake of sword.’ In October, a hership of threescore nolt and elevenscore sheep was successfully taken away; but shortly thereafter, on six hundred of the limmers coming into his neighbourhood, he raised a force of two hundred foot and a hundred and forty horsemen, and falling upon them by surprise, dispersed them in flight. It was in November that, seeing the overpowering force which was mustering against him, he went to claim the protection of the Council. While the law was there issuing writs in his favour, the Gordons openly broke out and took away another large hership of cattle and sheep. ‘To hold siller among their hands,’ they took their prey to a fair, and sold it, accepting a dollar for each cow, and a groat for each sheep. Among other violent acts, finding one of Frendraught’s men on the outlook for information, they hanged him as a spy. The quantity of plunder they took from Frendraught almost reaches a fabulous amount. After all they had already done, they ‘raised out of the ground thirteenscore of nolt and eighteenscore of sheep,’ which they took and stored in the Castle of Strathbogie, with a view to obtaining the protection of the marquis for their misdeeds. They also burnt fourscore stacks on his home-farm.--_Spal._ It was fully believed in the country that these violences were committed under the sanction of the Lady Rothiemay, who had the death of both a husband and a son to avenge upon Frendraught. At her trial in Edinburgh, two years after, it was charged against her, that she had received and entertained the Highlanders and their leaders, on their coming to make the attack on Frendraught. Certain it is, they now came with their prey to Rothiemay, entered the house, and began to live in riotous style upon Frendraught’s bestial, killing at once threescore bullocks and a hundred sheep. ‘Some they salted, some they roasted, and some they ate fresh.’ They also compelled Frendraught’s tenants to supply them with meal, malt, and poultry. According to Spalding, there was an appearance of force exercised on the lady and her two daughters, who were thrust into a kiln-barn to be out of the way of the depredators. But no one doubted that, in reality, the lady was happy to see them in her house. In her dittay, it is alleged that, on their return from the first day’s adventures, she had tables spread for them, and she and her daughters received them with salutations. On the evening of the day when they burned Frendraught’s stackyard, with twelvescore bolls of corn, the lady expressed herself as well pleased with their success; and at Christmas ‘she dancit with the licht horsemen in the place of Rothiemay, the _cushion-dance_, [bearing the cushion] upon her shoulder.’ Till the house, indeed, was summoned and