The friendship and patronage of Montrose were secure until money transactions, the usual source of alienations and bickerings, produced distrust on the one hand, and bitterness on the other. Montrose had advanced Rob Roy certain sums to carry on his speculations: they were successful until the defalcation of a third and inferior partner prevented Rob Roy from repaying the Marquis the money due to him. He was required to give up his lands to satisfy the demands upon him. For a time he refused, but ultimately he was compelled by a law-suit to mortgage his estates to Montrose with an understanding that they were to be restored to him whenever he could pay the money. Some time afterwards he made an attempt to recover his estate by the payment of his debts; but he was at first amused by excuses, and afterwards deprived of his property. Such is the simple statement of his partial biographer; but Sir Walter Scott gives the story a darker colouring. In his preface to Rob Roy he mentions that Rob Roy absconded, taking with him the sum of one thousand pounds which he had obtained from different gentlemen in Scotland for the purpose of buying cattle. In 1712 an advertisement to that effect was put into the daily papers repeatedly; but the active Highlander was beyond the reach of law. To this period we must assign a total change in the habits and characteristics of Rob Roy, who now began a lawless and marauding course of life. He went up into the Highlands where he was followed by one whose character has been variously represented--Mary Macgregor of Comar, his wife. According to one account, she was by no means the masculine and cruel being whom Scott has so powerfully described; yet, from several traits, it is obvious that she was one of the most determined of her sex, and that her natural boldness of spirit was exaggerated by an insult which was never forgiven, either by herself or by her husband. This was the forcible expulsion of herself and her family from their home at Inversnaid by Graham of Killearn, one of Montrose's agents; and the cruel act was accompanied by circumstances which nothing but death could blot from the memory of the outraged and injured Macgregor. The loss of property was nothing when compared with that one galling recollection.