_Rebels attempt to surprise the Grants_ The night before General Bland marched for Strathboggy, the Grants came first to the Kirk Town of Clate, which is about six miles south of Strathboggy and off from the high road to Aberdeen. As there were many disaffected people thereabouts, the Rebels at Huntly had notice of it that night, though it was late before they came there, and they immediately formed a scheme of surprising him next morning. But Grant, suspecting such a thing might be done, wisely advanced a mile further the same night to Castle Forbes, a house belonging to Lord Forbes, and by the strength of its old walls alone not easily to be taken without cannon, so that next morning when the Rebels under Roy Stuart missed them at Clate, they returned without meddling with the Castle. _Bland marches to Huntly_ Meantime General Bland had kept his orders for marching that morning so very closely that the Rebels had not got the least intelligence of it. The two corps from Inverury and Old Meldrum met at Rayne, and had it not been for a small accident, had intercepted the Rebels who were on the Clate Expedition and got to Strathboggy before them. For they, dreaming of no such thing, breakfasted very leisurely at Clate and stopped also at a public house betwixt it and Huntly. There was an exceeding great fog on the Hill of the Foudline, so that some senseless, idle people that were running up before the army, imagined that a plough that was going in the midst among some houses on the side of the hill, was a party of men; on which they gave the alarm that the Rebels were at hand, this was immediately forwarded by the liger Ladys[377] with a deal of consternation, so that some people of better sense gave credit to it and came up to the General with this false alarm. Whatever might be in it, he judged it safest for the men to halt and form, while proper persons were sent up to see what the matter was, who soon found out the mistake. But this trifle occasioned a stop for near half an hour or three quarters, and the Rebels were scarce so long in Strathboggy before the General came there.