"Can _you_ ask?" exclaimed Rob, with a glance of surprise, that was blended almost with ferocity. "I mean King James VIII. of Scotland. Queen Anne is ill, so men told me in the south; the day is not far distant when the flag will hang half-hoisted on the walls of Carlisle; and the first news that the Hanoverian Elector has landed in England will make the Highland hills bristle with broadswords--yea, bristle like a stubble-field! The heather will be on fire from Strathspey to Inverary, and this £200, Montrose, the sum exactly for which, as men say, you sold your country, when bribed to make the Union, I shall lay out in the service of him who has sworn to break it. Ochon! the ills that are coming upon us are a pregnant example of the folly of a people allowing their fatherland to be the property of kings! Thus, ours succeeded to the kingdom of England, just as they might have done to a farm or a barony; but England being the richer and the greater, they soon forgot the old house in which their good forefathers lived and died. And now, Montrose, learn from this hour that MacGregor is your enemy!" The duke, who was too high-spirited to brook being bearded in his own house, raised his hand to the bell to summon his servants, but paused on seeing the stern frown that gathered on MacGregor's face, and that his right hand was on the pistol in his girdle. With a mock reverence Rob left his presence, reached the barbican, mounted his horse, and was soon galloping down Strathblane towards the banks of the Enrich. The duke's first intention was to have him overtaken by a mounted party and made prisoner; but he speedily dismissed the idea, for to waylay one who had just left his own threshold would cover his name with disgrace and reprobation throughout the north; and, moreover, the castle of Mugdock was uncomfortably near the Highland frontier. "No, no," he muttered; "'twere better that he should fall into other hands than mine, and find his way from thence to the castle of Dumbarton, or the _kindly_ gallows of Crieff," for so the Highlanders ironically termed that formidable gibbet on which so many a sturdy cateran has taken his last farewell of the sun. CHAPTER XV. DESOLATION. Full of his own thoughts, which were fiery and bitter, and feeling fully resolved to challenge Montrose to a combat, according to the laws of honour and of arms, Rob rode fast along the eastern shore of Loch Lomond: but darkness had set in before he drew near Inversnaid. Then his heart began to swell with other and kindlier emotions as he pictured his home and his household--his wife and their fairhaired children welcoming him back; and already their voices seemed to sound in his ears, and their smiling faces to come before him.