With MacAleister, Greumoch, Alaster Roy, Rob found his eldest son Coll already there. There, too, came even old Paul Crubach, armed with the hiltless sword on which he had impaled the unfortunate cat; and on reckoning his force, Rob found that it consisted of five hundred and two claymores, all men resolute and true as the steel of which their weapons were made. The milky light of the stars glimmered at times through the flying clouds, on their swords and round shields studded with polished nails and bosses of brass and steel, as they sat or stood in picturesque groups, muttering and whispering, and chewing the _muilcionn_, as the Highlanders name the spignel, which they were wont to chew like liquorice or quids of tobacco, in winter and spring. Measures for the attack were soon resolved on by a force alike destitute of cannon, petards, or scaling-ladders. They were simply these: To advance to the gate in the ancient and classic form of a wedge, led by Rob Roy; and if Oina had failed to remove or overcome the sentinel, to trust to the sledge-hammer first and the sword-blade after. Those nearest in blood, highest in rank in the clan, and the best armed, were to keep close by Rob in the conflict; so Coll, MacAleister, and Greumoch were immediately in his rear, as the march was begun in silence up the side of the stream, towards the point of attack. The cuarans, or shoes of untanned deerskin, then worn by-the Highlanders, strapped sandalwise over the instep and ankles, enabled this mass of men to advance over the rocky and rough ground as silently and noiselessly as if they trod on the soft heather, or on "the down of Cana," the cotton grass of which Ossian sang, and which whitens the Highland mosses in spring, when the sheep crop it, before it bursts into flower. After a march of something less than a mile, before them, on an eminence, rose the strong walls and black outline of the fort and barrack they were about to assail. Halting his men at some distance, MacGregor crept forward softly and drew near the arched gate, on each side of which three pieces of cannon frowned through embrasures of stone. He listened intently for the step of the sentinel within, but heard only the wind, as it moaned past the mouths of the cannon. He uttered a shrill whistle like that of a curlew, a signal he had agreed on with Oina, and her expected response, three knocks on the gate, made his heart leap, for he now knew that the sentinel had fallen into a snare, that she had succeeded in intoxicating him, and that the outer barrier at least was open. Hastening back to his men, he exclaimed,-- "Come on, my lads, and follow me; the path is clear!" He drew his sword, and a gleam of light seemed to pass over all the dusky mass as every man followed his example, and rushing on like a living flood, they flung themselves against the gate, within which the sentinel was lying in his box quite intoxicated.