On Sunday McLeod was prevailed on to send a large detachment of his own company over the water for three miles, which had a very happy effect, driving off all the enemy’s Scouts and facilitating their intelligence, so that they met with no less than three persons from town that had come out in disguises and by byeways who brought letters giving an exact account of the enemy’s numbers and situation, which people otherways would all have been intercepted by their Scouts. This so entirely convinced the Lieutenant that commanded the detachment, of the necessity either of constant patroles, or then of an advance Guard at Kintore, that he had everything settled for one or other, never doubting but his representation would prevail, but there was no convincing Culkairn, so that next day there came not a man over the water at all. _The Enemy Alarmed_ The Enemy’s Scouts on being thus driven off, having seen the party but imperfectly, alarmed their friends in town with an account that the whole of the McLeods were marching to attack them, on which they drew together, but were soon undeceived. The same night after it was dark they convened their men and marched three miles out of town, as if to surprise the enemy, but whether it was only a feint to see if their men would stand by them, or if it was owing to any wrong notion that the McLeods were apprised of them, they returned to town again without doing anything. _Rebels’ Artifice_ This day too, they had tried a strategem to raise a mutiny among the McLeods by bribing a tenant’s son of McLeod’s (who had been staying with a Nonjurant Minister, teaching his children Latin and so had imbibed all the Jacobite notions) to go to Inverury and see to persuade the men that they were engaged in an unjust cause, that their enemies were very numerous and powerful, and that Lord Loudon had purposely sent them up to be cut off in a strange country. As this fellow had their language, was their namesake and countryman, they readily listened to him and it was taking among them like lightening, till the fellow was found out and apprehended, but the impression still stuck to them, till McLeod drew them all out, and very particularly showed them the roguery. _The Rebels march_