Encouraged by this victory to attempt greater enterprises, MacGregor now resolved to break down into the Lowlands, to carry off the spoil of his enemies; and remembering that it was about the time when the rents of his great enemy the Duke of Montrose were collected, he conceived the idea of visiting the chamberlain on the rent-day--of putting the whole money in his own pocket, and, to punish his grace for old scores, to carry off the obnoxious Killearn bodily into the mountains. "As the runnels from a hundred hills unite in one, and form a mighty stream," said he, in a stirring address to his followers, "so must all the branches of our outraged people now converge in one. From Glengyle and Glenstrae, from Menteith and Balquhidder, let us muster and march--march down on those sons of little men, the Lowlanders; and they shall shrink before us like dry leaves beneath the lightning! Our forefathers sleep on Inchcailloch; but we, alas! must find our graves on the mountain side, where nothing shall mark them to future times but a grey cairn or a greener spot amid the purple heather." "Down on the mongrel bodachs--down on the Whigamores!" responded his followers, brandishing their swords with almost savage glee; for to the Highlander then the single word Whig expressed the acme of anything that was sordid, mean, and treacherous to king and country. CHAPTER XXXI. ROB SEIZES THE RENTS OF MONTROSE. It was about the middle of summer in the year 1717, when Rob Roy, leaving the main body of his followers, under his son Coll, posted among the hills of Buchanan, where they had collected a great herd of cattle, the spoil of their hereditary enemies, set forth with twenty men and his favourite piper, Alpine, on a visit to Killearn. MacAleister and Greumoch were, of course, among these chosen twenty, who were literally his _Leine a chrios_--the select men of his followers, meaning in English his "shirt of mail," or children of the belt--men at all times ready to support, obey, defend, or die for him. Fearing that Killearn might obtain tidings of his approach, and take to flight with his grace of Montrose's money, Rob marched towards his residence with great secrecy and rapidity; and avoiding the highways passed through woods and defiles, and about twelve in the forenoon presented himself suddenly at the Place of Killearn, as Grahame's mansion is still named. It stands a mile and a half south of the village of Killearn, at the western extremity of Strathblane, in Stirlingshire, and having been built in 1688, it was then surrounded by clumps of wood and plantations. Here MacGregor was informed by the terrified household that the laird was at the Inn of Chapelerroch, where the tenantry of the duke had been summoned to pay their rents; so he departed at once, with a threat, that if they deceived him, he would return and burn the house to the ground.