Nevertheless, he repaired to the village alehouse, and found a gentleman named Henry Cunninghame, the Laird of Boquhan, seated by the fire over a bottle of claret, which cost only tenpence per mutchkin, and was then a favourite beverage with all ranks in Scotland. He at once recognized MacGregor, and they entered into conversation; but some remarks which he made, either on the affairs of the exiled king, or those of MacGregor, exasperated the latter, who sprang up with a hand on his sword, in token of defiance and quarrel. Boquhan was unarmed. MacGregor could have supplied him with pistols; but being the challenged party he preferred the sword, in the use of which few in Scotland equalled and none excelled him. The goodwife of the tavern, fearing a brawl, averred that she had not a single weapon in her house; so the laird despatched a messenger to his residence for a sword, which his wife refused to send him, knowing well it was required for a duel or a brawl; so daylight broke, and found them still loth to part in anger, and still waiting for a weapon. It chanced then that Boquhan espied an old and rusty rapier in a corner, which had hitherto escaped his notice. He at once possessed himself of it; Rob unsheathed his claymore; the tables and chairs were thrust aside, and the combat began with great fury. It is stated that MacGregor soon discovered that he had no ordinary antagonist in Henry Cunninghame; and having no particular animosity to him, and remembering, perhaps, how perilous to his own clan his death, or even a severe wound, would prove at that particular crisis, after a dozen passes or so, he lowered the point of his sword, and said,-- "Enough of this, Boquhan; I find you are brave as you are expert, and I yield to you." So he sheathed his sword, and they parted good friends; but Rob's enemies in the Lennox magnified his prudence into a humiliating defeat. CHAPTER XVII. THE JACOBITE BOND. Roy Roy and those who adhered to him found themselves tolerably safe in the land of the Campbells--the more so as his mother was a daughter of that powerful clan which had been at enmity with the house of Montrose since the wars of the Covenant, since the slaughter of the Campbells at Inverlochy by the Great Marquis, and since the invasion of Lorn by his cavaliers. Fortunately for Rob Roy, the mutual hate between the Dukes of Argyll and Montrose was still as hot as ever. The death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I. soon brought political matters to a crisis in Scotland, where the Jacobites had remained quiet enough under the rule of a sovereign who was a Stuart, and under none else could the union of the two kingdoms ever have been achieved.