"'I know,' said his Lordship, 'without your telling me, that you have come to enlist in the Highland Watch; for a thousand men like you I would give an estate.' Donald Macleod then, at Lovat's request, related his history and pedigree,--that subject which most delights the heart of a Highlander. Lord Lovat clasped him in his arms, and kissed him, and then led him into an adjoining bedchamber, where Lady Lovat then lay, to whom he introduced the Sergeant. Lady Lovat raised herself in her bed, called for a bottle of brandy, and drank prosperity to Lord Lovat, to the Highland Watch, and to Donald Macleod. 'It is superfluous to say,' adds the Sergeant, 'that in this toast the lady was pledged by the gentlemen.'" In contradiction to this attractive account of Lord Lovat's splendour and hospitality we must quote a very different description, given by the astronomer Ferguson. Lord Lovat's abode, according to his account, boasted, indeed, a numerous feudal retinue within its walls, but presented little or no comfort. It was a rude tower with only four apartments in it, and none of these spacious. Lord Lovat's own room served at once as his place for constant residence, his room for receiving company, and his bedchamber. Lady Lovat's bedchamber was allotted to her for all these purposes also. The domestics and a herd of retainers were lodged in the four lower rooms of the tower, a quantity of straw constituting their bed-furniture. Sometimes above four hundred persons were thus huddled together here; the power which their savage and ungrateful chieftain exercised over them was despotic; and Ferguson himself had occasionally the pleasurable sight of some half dozen of them hung up by the heels for hours, on a few trees near the house.[213] The pretended loyalty of the chief to the exiled family constituted a strong bond of union between Lovat and his followers; and having them once under his command, "that indefinable magic by which he all his life swayed those who neither loved nor esteemed him," to borrow Mrs. Grant's expression, caused them afterwards to follow his desperate fortunes. "He resembled, in this respect," says the same admirable writer, "David when in the cave of Adullam, for every one that was discontented, and every one that was in debt, literally resorted to him." Lovat, once settled in the abode of his ancestors, did all that he could do to efface the memory of the past, and to redeem the good opinion of his neighbours. One thing he alone left undone,--he did not amend his life. Crafty, vindictive, gross, tyrannical, few men ever continued long such a career with impunity.