She was living with her mother and other friends at her house in the Stirlingshire parish of Baldron, when, one December night of 1750, they found it beset by four of the brothers and other confederates, who broke in, terrified the inmates with a display of weapons, and by threats of murder and burning forced the mother to bring her daughter out of a closet where she had hidden herself. Poor Jean, wooed in such rough style, vainly besought at least a few hours for consideration of the proposal thus pressed upon her. Dragged from her mother’s arms, she was thrown over a horse, tied painfully with ropes, and carried off in spite of her screams and struggles. On their way to Loch Lomond, a distance of two or three hours’ walk, the abductors stopped at more than one house, and seem hardly to have cared to conceal their proceedings, but no one durst interfere with them. Professor William Richardson of Glasgow, then a seven-year-old boy at the manse of Aberfoyle, could afterwards “describe as a terrible dream their violent and noisy entry into the house. The Highlanders filled the little kitchen, brandishing their arms, demanding what they pleased, and receiving whatever they demanded. James Mhor, he said, was a tall, stern, and soldierlike man. Robin Oig looked more gentle; dark, but yet ruddy in complexion--a good-looking young savage. Their victim was so dishevelled in her dress, and forlorn in her appearance and demeanour that he could hardly tell whether she was alive or dead.” Scott’s story is that at Rowardennan a priest was called in to perform a marriage ceremony in face of the bride’s protests; and that she was afterwards brought to the church of Balquhidder, where the husband affirmed the marriage while the wife kept terrified silence. She seems now to have been cowed into some sort of submission; as it came out on the trial that she had seen the sheriff-substitute, and refused his offer of assistance in escaping from her strange plight. It is said that old women were employed to administer drugs to her by way of love philtres; and by threats and entreaties she was made to sign papers declaring herself to have been carried off by her own consent. For now the high-handed husband found how he lived in a new age. The wife’s relatives appealed to the law, undeterred by threats of vengeful feud in good old Highland fashion. Soldiers were sent to back up warrants; and what made a more effectual hitch in the brothers’ scheme, the Court of Session sequestrated the woman’s property, _teterrima causa_ of the crime.