"Particularly let my own tenants in Kildrummy know that if they come not forth with their best arms, that I will send a party immediately to burn what they shall miss taking from them. And they may believe this only a threat, but by all that's sacred, I'll put it into execution, that it may be an example to others. "You are to tell the gentlemen that I'll expect them in their best accoutrements, on horseback, and no excuse to be accepted of. Go about this with diligence, and come yourself and let me know your having done so. All this is not only as ye will be answerable to me, but to your King and country." Straight writing enough! And that was why the Black Colonel had sent me the historic epistle, laughing in his sleeve, I had no doubt, at the slim originality of his method. He was for gentle means, if he could so win his ends and Marget, but if they answered not, then, like my Lord Mar with Jock Forbes of Inverernan, he would be "forced to put other means into execution." While I was the immediate target for his threat, I quite saw that the Black Colonel was aiming at a larger prize behind me. But what could he, a "broken man," a fugitive from justice, the justice of the Hanoverian though it was, do to compel anybody to his schemes and ambitions? That was to forget his place of notoriety, which gave its own power, among the people of the Aberdeenshire Highlands. Whenever, in going about the hills and the valleys, I met a simple man of the soil he would touch his bonnet in salute to me, never to my uniform, and, after a little, remark in his soft Gaelic, "So the Black Colonel is still defying you all--a tremendous lad, isn't he?" This would be said with a gleam in the eye, to give it delicacy, a bearing of personal courtesy which I did not miss because I was liked for myself, and we all like to be liked for ourselves. You will apprehend by now, perhaps, that I knew my Highland men, whether I found them digging peats in the moss, or gathering in their skimp harvest of unopened corn, so that it should escape the hungry grouse and the coming winter. They were wholly kindly, as follows from simple living, generous in their narrow outlook, and yet strongly individual. They had, as a people, character, which is the noblest gift of the gods, for everything else depends on it, and hardly anything can be achieved without it. They took a pride in the Black Colonel, as one of themselves, and in his deeds as a fighter who, on many occasions, had reversed the saying about being willing to wound but afraid to strike. He had, they admitted, wrong ways at times, and if these could not openly be defended, still they were almost forgiven a man with his back to the wall where a shot, or a stab, might find him any day or any night.