In the beginning of the eighteenth century Aberdeen was by no means a dull place, and indeed Dr Gregorie, one suspects, may sometimes have wished it to be duller, as for example when Rob Roy during the brief time of his success was raising recruits for the Jacobite cause amongst his clansmen there. The Earl of Mar, into whose hands the perfidy of Montrose had thrown Rob Roy, had requested him to bring as many of his clansmen into the Stuart camp as he could muster. While he was occupied with this task, he lived with Dr Gregorie, for, however much the physician may have deplored his connection with that too notorious person, he could never afford to neglect him; and the charm of the Gregorie household so fell upon the big, warm-hearted outlaw, that in a burst of kindness and enthusiasm he offered to take Dr Gregorie’s little son and ‘mak a man o’ him.’[6] Rob Roy thought him far too good to waste upon doctoring, and if the sunny child had got his way, he would have followed the cateran in that delicious life of adventure which he painted—a life of hunting and fighting and success. Footnote 6: Scene imitated by Scott, in Bailie Nicol Jarvie’s offer to take Rob’s sons James and Robert to apprentice.—_Rob Roy_, Ch. xxxiv. But Dr Gregorie was much alarmed; he must not offend his cousin, not only because he loved him, but because they were all alike quick in anger, and a cold answer might have been answered by yet colder steel. He could not trouble him with the youth’s education, and he had only been trained in the Lowlands, and was not at all what a Highland boy of his years would be, said the doctor, but all this depreciation only made Rob Roy the keener to be friendly; and at last when every other excuse had failed, the doctor shook his head and confessed that the child was too delicate and would not live through a Highland winter. So, full of compassion one for another the cousins parted, their roads ran far apart; Rob Roy came to his end claymore in hand listening to the dirge ‘Cha till mi tuillidh’ (we return no more), while for the doctor there was a career of steady success and a peaceful ending in the sweet house in the middle of the herb garden.