One day, as the maid who attended usually upon Lady Kilmarnock was inspecting some linen in an upper room of Dean Castle, the door of the apartment suddenly opened of its own accord, and the view of a bloody head, resembling that of Lord Kilmarnock, was presented to the affrighted woman. As she gazed in horror, the head rolled near her. She endeavoured in vain to repel it with her foot. She became powerless, but she was still able to scream; her shrieks brought Lord Kilmarnock and his Countess to the chamber. The apparition had vanished; but she related succinctly the story "which, at that time," says the historian who repeats it,[339] "Lord Kilmarnock too much ridiculed, though it could have been wished that he had been forewarned by the omen. Such was the superstition of the times, in which ignorance and credulity found such ready supporters." At Culloden, this ill-fated nobleman occupied a post not far from the Prince, in the rear of whom was a line of reserve, consisting of three columns, the first of which, on the left, was commanded by Lord Kilmarnock; the centre column by Lord Lewis Gordon and Glenbucket; and the right by the justly-celebrated Roy Stewart. In the opposite ranks, an ensign in the royal regiment, was his son, Lord Boyd. During the confusion of the fight, when half-blinded by the smoke, the unhappy Lord Kilmarnock, as if fated to fulfil the omen, mistook a party of English Dragoons for FitzJames's Horse, and was accordingly taken prisoner. He was led along the lines of the British infantry. The vaunted beauty of his countenance, and the matchless graces of which so much has been said, were now obliterated by the disorder of his person, and his humiliating position. His hat had been lost in the conflict, and his long hair fell about his face. The soldiers as he was led along stood in mute compassion at this sight. Among those who thus looked upon this unfortunate man was his son, Lord Boyd, who was constrained to witness, without attempting to alleviate, the distress of that moment. When the Earl passed the place where his son stood, the youth, unable to bear that his father should be thus exposed bareheaded to the storm which played upon the scene of carnage, stepped out of the ranks and taking his own hat from his head, placed it on that of his father. It was the work of an instant, and not a syllable escaped the lips of the agitated young man.[340]