with the Triumvirate, and in this Montrose's name had been inserted. But though the particulars of the various schemes may have differed, they all practically tended to the same end. Whether he was to stand alone, an absolute dictator, or to be one of a nominal council, Argyll was the only man who could save Scotland in her present straits. But Montrose had a party as well as Argyll. Besides the few who, like Napier and Stirling, looked to him as their head, there were many who, while not sharing his sanguine loyalty, and perhaps not altogether trusting him, were agreed with him that the time had come when the Covenant needed to be saved from itself. They were indeed in much the same predicament as Montrose himself, though his peculiar temperament and aspiring genius made impossible for him what was merely troublesome for men of commoner mould. They had subscribed the Covenant not to destroy their king, but to save their religion. They had subscribed it, in short, without sufficiently considering whether it must inevitably lead them among such a people and at such a time, unless Charles were to undergo some marvellous change in his nature and ideas which only dreamers could hope for, and which, it is not too much to say, no man then wearing a crown was likely to undergo. To dethrone Charles merely to set up Argyll in his place was to their taste neither as Scotsmen nor Covenanters. To this party Montrose determined to appeal. A conversation held with Lindsay during a hasty visit to Edinburgh convinced him that this idea of a dictatorship was no mere fancy of Argyll's ambitious brain, nor promoted only by his creatures. In seasons of great peril 'Tis good that one bear sway.