‘COL. MCDONELL.’[59] An odious tale is told by the ‘Impartial Hand,’ about Barisdale’s conduct to his wife’s young sister. We do not trust the Impartial one where we have not corroboration, and, to his fair prisoner, Lady Sutherland, Barisdale certainly displays a tender gallantry. But she may not have regretted that her Barisdale was occasionally absent. Cumberland was approaching, and, on the eve of Culloden, Lord Cromarty was captured in ‘The Battle of Golspie,’ while dallying over his _adieux_ to ‘his favourite Amazon,’ the Countess of Sutherland, as the Impartial one invidiously declares. The Countess must have managed her diplomacy adroitly, for the Whig author previously cited says, ‘It is a pity the present Earl of Sutherland should be such a weak man, but his lady behaved very honourably, though her brother (nephew) the Lord Elcho, was engaged in the Rebellion.’[60] The lady’s letter to Prince Charles was not known to our author. Barisdale, leaving his fair prisoner, marched south, and halted at Beauly, on the night before Culloden. ‘He might easily have reached the field, had he been any way resolute or brave.’ But like the Master of Lovat and Cluny, Barisdale came up too late. The fugitives passed through Inverness, under his eyes, and Barisdale also made off. He was at the Meeting of the Chiefs at Murlagan, on May 8, when it was determined to rally in a week, and a treaty was made, that all should hold together, in spite of the Prince’s defection.[61] When the week ended, nobody came to the tryst but Lochgarry, who retired at once, Lochiel, and Barisdale, with three or four hundred of their clans. But the Rev. John Cameron, in ‘The Lyon in Mourning’ (i. 88) accuses Barisdale of promising to return next day, as a blind, and of sending instead two companies of infantry in English service, to capture Lochiel. They were recognised by their red crosses, and Lochiel escaped, ‘which was owing to its not being in Barisdale’s power’—to catch him, ‘rather than to want of inclination,’ says Mr. Cameron. Murray of Broughton represents Barisdale as accusing his cousin and enemy, Lochgarry, of treachery, and believes that both were equally guilty, but Lochiel was as incapable of suspecting as of being guilty of treason. In his Letter to the Chiefs, of May 26, he says that Clanranald’s men refuse to leave their own country, that Glengarry’s men have yielded up their arms (induced thereto, we shall see, by Old Glengarry), that Lochgarry promised to return, but did not, and that, ‘trusting to Lochgarry’s information, we had almost been surprized.’ But he never hints at a suspicion of Barisdale.[62]