The Highland winter had now set in with its usual severity; the snow, which drifted deep in the passes, rendered Rob safe from all attacks at that time; so the days were occupied peacefully by his people in attending to their cattle, hunting deer, and collecting fuel; the evenings were spent with the harp and pipe, with sword play, or practice with the target and claymore, in dancing and athletic exercises; till the spring days came, and the ice began to melt in the deep lochs, and the snow to dissolve in runnels of water down the steep slopes of the mountains. "The three Faoilteach have been as bad as the worst days of winter," said Rob, as he looked over the vast extent of hill and glen that lay round his home; "so, please God, we shall have fair spring weather, Helen, to meet Lord Seaforth in Kintail na Bogh." It is a belief in the Highlands that if the _faoilteach_, three days which January borrowed from February by the bribe of three young lambs, prove fair and pleasant, there will be bad and stormy weather throughout the ensuing year. "I would you were safely back from Kintail," said Helen; "for danger, it may be death, are before you, Rob. Does not Paul Crubach say that he has had visions of grey warriors riding along the steepest cliffs of Craigrostan and Benvenue, where mortal horseman never rode, nor living horse could keep its footing?" "Likely enough, good wife; for poor Paul sees that which others never see," said Rob, laughing. And now on the 1st day of April, 1719, came a messenger from Sir James Livingstone, to state that the Spanish fleet had sailed for the Hebrides, and directing Rob to march for Glensheil with all the loyal and discontented Highlanders he could collect, and to halt near the head of Loch Hourn, till the Spaniards arrived. "These Spaniards come from a land of wine and oranges," said Helen; "how will our long kail and oat cakes agree with their dainty stomachs?" "Better than English bullets, Helen," said Rob. When he departed with his followers from Portnellan he took with him the little English boy, Harry Huske, for he doubted not that after falling down into the Lowlands, or even before that time came to pass, there would be many encounters with the Government troops, and an opportunity must occur for restoring him to his father the major. Helen MacGregor had become deeply attached to the child, who had many pretty and winning ways; thus she wept bitterly when he was taken from her, and is said to have repeated the ominous words of her former prediction, "that the boy was too fair and beautiful to find a place on earth." Secretly though the messengers of Livingstone were despatched, the Government were on the alert, and had their troops in the field nearly as soon as the Jacobites, for so great was the terror in England of this Spanish invasion, that aid was sought as usual from Holland; and already six thousand Dutch infantry, with a great body of British troops, were on the march for Scotland.