It was commenced during the winter season, and he and his workmen lodged in huts near the edifice. One night, when the snow was falling heavily in great and feathery flakes, they were roused by some travellers noisily demanding shelter. On the door being opened, a number of fierce-looking MacGregors, with their plaids and bonnets coated with snow, rushed in, menaced the poor workmen with drawn swords, and reviled them bitterly. Being defenceless and unarmed men, they were not slain by Rob Roy's followers, but they were driven half naked through the snow to a distance, when Greumoch and young Coll dismissed them, after exacting from them a solemn oath that they would never again enter the MacGregors' country. Whether the same masons returned or not we have no means of knowing; but the fort was ultimately finished and garrisoned. "Mr. Naysmith," says Robert Chambers, "being held by Government to a contract which he could not fulfil, was seriously injured in his means by this affair; but its worst consequence was the effect of exposure on that dreadful winter night on his health. He sunk under his complaints, and died about eighteen months after." When the fort was complete, the works were mounted with cannon, and the barrack within it was occupied by three companies of Lord Tyrawley's regiment, the South British Fusiliers, under Major (formerly Captain) Huske, with express orders to keep the MacGregors in check and to make short work with them on every occasion--orders not to be misconstrued. During the progress of this--to Rob Roy--most obnoxious erection, he lurked with MacAleister in the cavern near Loch Lomond; the same place which, as we have said, sheltered the gallant King Robert I., after the battle of Dalree, where the famous Brooch of Lorn was torn from his shoulder. It is near Craigrostan and Inversnaid, on the eastern bank of the loch. The entrance is near the edge of the water, and is partly concealed by great masses of rock, like a fallen Cyclopean wall, which have been shaken by the volcanic throes of nature from the crags above. Amid these masses, the wild foxglove, the purple heather, the green whin, and dense brushwood of every kind flourish, serving to conceal the access, which is every way one of peril and difficulty. Here he was perfectly secure, though he could hear drums beating in Inversnaid; and sometimes he ventured at night to leave it, and visit his wife and children, who resided under Greumoch's care, in an obscure hut among the mountains of Breadalbane; and on these occasions he twice narrowly escaped being taken when returning to his retreat.