The money was gone, no man dared to touch our hero, and he and Dundonell went peacefully home together! Our hero had dominated and insulted the Mackenzies and was obliged to be satisfied with that result. In the following years (1751-54) Knoydart and Lochaber were perfectly demoralised. The hidden treasure of Loch Arkaig had set Macdonalds against Camerons; cousins were betraying cousins, and brothers were blackmailing brothers. The details (much veiled in this work) are to be found in the Duke of Cumberland’s MSS. at Windsor Castle. The murder of Campbell of Glenure by Allan Breck, or by Sergeant Mohr Cameron, and the reports of Pickle, James Mohr, and a set of other spies, had alarmed the Government with fears of a rising aided by Prussia. Consequently arrests were frequent and no man knew whom he could trust. Col of Barisdale, a double-dyed traitor, was dead in gaol, but his eldest son was being hunted on island, loch, and mountain. Now in a letter from an English officer, Captain Izard, dated September 30, 1751, and preserved at Windsor, he says: ‘Dr. Macdonald, living at Kylles, and brother of Glengarry, told that young Barisdale lay at his house the Monday before and proposed going to the Isle of Skye.’ The giver of this information was not a man in whom to confide. Our hero, however, confided. Disguised as a rough serving-man he went fishing for lythe with ‘my relation, Dr. Macdonell of Kylles, an eminent physician.’ An English vessel, the _Porcupine_, under the notorious Captain Fergusson, came in sight. Dr. Macdonell insisted on taking our hero on board her, and there, as he sat over his punch, informed the English officers that the servant who accompanied him was a gentleman. Fergusson arrested Macdonell at once on suspicion of being young Barisdale, and he lay for some time a prisoner in Fort William. Now the Doctor may only have blabbed in his cups, but, taken with Captain Izard’s report, his behaviour looks very odd. Our hero, however, does not suspect his relation, the Doctor, but denounces his cousin, Captain Allan Macdonald of Knock, in Sleat, as his betrayer, and ‘the greatest spy and informer in all Scotland.’ However it be, the betrayal of Colonel John was apparently a family affair.