Proud of the past, however vague, the Red MacGregor, like all his Celtic countrymen, believed in the words of the bard, that-- Ere ever Ossian raised his song, To tell of Fingal's fame; Ere ever from their sunny clime The Roman eagles came: The hills had given to heroes birth, Brave e'en amid the brave; Who taught, above tyrannic dust, The thistle tufts to wave! And this belief in a lofty and warlike ancestry has ever been the Highlander's greatest incentive to moral character and heroic bearing. CHAPTER IX. THE DEVASTATION OF KIPPEN. In the days of Rob Roy there were no police, troops, or garrisons in his part of the Highlands, and no law was recognized save that of the sword. William III. had recently been placed on the throne, and he exasperated the MacGregors by restoring all the oppressive Acts passed against them--Acts which had been cancelled for a time by Charles II. Thus they were again compelled to assume other names than their own, or forfeit land, arms, and all means of livelihood. The memory of William of Orange is still abhorred by the Highlanders. He was a king whose cowardice lost the battle of Steinkirke, and by whose behest torture was last judicially used, on Neville Payne, an Englishman, in a Scottish court of law. He introduced flogging into the army, keelhauling into the navy; "and he," says Sir William Napier, "is the _only_ general on record to whom attaches the detestable distinction of sporting with men's lives by wholesale; and who fought the battle of St. Denis with the Peace of Nimeguen in his pocket, because he would not deny himself a _safe_ lesson in his trade;" and he it was who, by his own sign manual, condemned the whole inhabitants of a Scottish valley to be slaughtered in their beds at midnight, and this was _after_ he had _ratified_ the Treaty of Achalader! Hatred of this king and of those who adhered to him determined Rob Roy to punish some of the Whigs in his neighbourhood, and remembering how active the Buchanans had made themselves since the days of Glenfruin, he resolved to fall upon them.