"To the hills! to the hills! and follow me!" shouted Rob, as he slung his shield on his back, and dashed off at his utmost speed towards the mountains. Under a fire of muskets and carbines, he and his men crossed unhurt a torrent that foamed through the valley, and seeking a path, where few infantry and certainly no cavalry could follow, they began a leisurely retreat up the mountains towards the head of Loch Lomond. Exasperated by this sudden and unlooked-for escape, Colonel Grahame ordered the horse to make a detour, and the infantry to follow in direct pursuit. Then began a desultory skirmish, in which the MacGregors had all the advantage; for their tartans blended with the dun-coloured heather and green ferns, while the militia were fatally conspicuous in their blue uniforms. Thus, several were shot, and MacAleister threw the spy, MacLaren, into a mill-race, near the House of Comar, where he was swept away and drowned. After this, "the Grahames thought proper to withdraw," and thus ended another attempt to capture Rob Roy. To avenge this defeat, and the capture of his factor, it is related in the "Domestic Annals of Scotland," that the Duke of Montrose got all his farmers in the Lennox armed and mounted, for the purpose of attacking Rob; but Glune-dhu, the nephew of the latter, with the MacGregors of Glengyle, attacked his grace's men, and surrounded and disarmed them. Of this encounter we are unable to furnish the details; but, unfortunately for our hero, the next attempt had a very different result. CHAPTER XXXVI. A WEIRD STORY. In tracing the history of Rob Roy, we now come to one of those dark and supernatural events which, according to Highland tradition, were then a portion of the everyday life of the Scottish mountaineers, and were the result of local influences, and by their minds being deeply imbued in early youth by poetry and music, by legends anterior even to the songs of Ossian, and by the solemn scenery of the vast solitudes which formed their home. The strange event referred to, occurred in the Tower of Glengyle. Another version of it has been given by a celebrated essayist on the superstitions of the Highlanders, but without stating the locality, or who were the actors therein. Some days after baffling Colonel Grahame's party at Crianlarich--and while Montrose was planning a raid, to be led by himself in person into the mountains, for the purpose of capturing Rob Roy--the latter, with MacAleister, was hunting in the old Royal forest of Glenfinglas, and among the hills that look down on Glenlochy, a long and narrow vale in Breadalbane, where, in his father's time, Duncan of the Heads resided, and where the ruins of his house are still to be traced among the heather.