Craig, an unfortified building, and therefore not rightly within this strange peacemaker's commission, but also the property of an Ogilvy, shared the same fate. Argyll next turned his attention to the lands of Breadalbane, but finding his way barred by Athole with a force almost amounting to one-fourth of his own, he preferred to effect by diplomacy what he dared not put to the trial of the sword. Athole, unmindful of the fate of Huntly, was caught in the same snare. Under promise of a safe-conduct he was persuaded with his captains to meet Argyll in conference. The conference was an ambuscade. The whole party were seized and sent as prisoners to Edinburgh. Then, after settling a longstanding account with the Macdonalds, against whom he held a twofold grudge as hereditary foes of his House and as friends and in some sort vassals of the House of Gordon, and laying Badenoch waste from Lochaber to Braemar, this great warrior returned in triumph to Edinburgh to impeach Montrose for treason against the Covenant in dealing too leniently with its enemies. From this ridiculous charge Montrose found little difficulty in exonerating himself. Argyll would have had him tried by court-martial, but neither Leslie nor the Committee of Estates would entertain the proposal, and Montrose was unanimously pronounced to have done his duty as a true soldier of the Covenant. But he had now far more serious matter for thought than this paltry ebullition of temper. While in Leslie's camp at Dunse a proposal was submitted to him, which of all men in Scotland he was the last to hear calmly. Already there had been some secret debate among the extreme party of the right of subjects to depose a faithless king, and Argyll had already maintained in Parliament the right of the Estates to pass laws without the royal sanction. How far matters had gone Montrose did not yet know, but he had other grounds than mere pique for suspecting Argyll and his faction of some deep design against the King's authority. The plan now submitted to him confirmed his worst suspicions. It inflamed his jealousy of Argyll, while threatening to break for ever the dream he still cherished of placing Charles at the head of a constitutional government with a Presbyterian Church. The precise details of the scheme are rather obscure; for when it afterwards became matter of public inquiry, those most directly concerned repudiated all knowledge of it. There seem in fact to have been more than one scheme, that submitted to Montrose having been chosen as least likely to alarm his inconvenient loyalty, while at the same time offering a sop to his ambition by assigning him a share in the executive. According to this the government of Scotland was to be placed in the hands of a Triumvirate, consisting of Argyll, Mar, and Cassillis. Argyll was to rule all the lands beyond the Forth, while the southern counties were to be in charge of his colleagues. A committee or council was to work