My informant and his father were dispatched on the expedition. They had no goodwill to the journey; nevertheless, provided with a little food, and with a dog to help them to manage the cattle, they set off with Macgregor. They travelled a long day’s journey in the direction of the mountain Benvoirlich, and slept for the night in a ruinous hut or bothy. The next morning they resumed their journey among the hills, Rob Roy directing their course by signs and marks on the heath, which my informant did not understand. About noon Rob commanded the armed party to halt and to lie crouched in the heather where it was thickest. “Do you and your son,” he said to the oldest Lowlander, “go boldly over the hill;--you will see beneath you, in a glen on the other side, your master’s cattle feeding, it may be, with others; gather your own together, taking care to disturb no one else, and drive them to this place. If anyone speak to, or threaten you, tell them that I am here, at the head of twenty men.” “But what if they abuse us, or kill us?” said the Lowland peasant, by no means delighted at finding the embassy imposed on him and his son. “If they do you any wrong,” said Rob, “I will never forgive them as long as I live.” The Lowlander was by no means content with this security, but did not think it safe to dispute Rob’s injunctions. He and his son climbed the hill, therefore, found a deep valley, where there grazed, as Rob had predicted, a large herd of cattle. They cautiously selected those which their master had lost, and took measures to drive them over the hill. As soon as they began to remove them, they were surprised by hearing cries and screams, and looking around in fear and trembling, they saw a woman, seeming to have started out of the earth, who _flyted_ at them, that is, scolded them, in Gaelic. When they contrived, however, in the best Gaelic they could muster, to deliver the message Rob Roy told them, she became silent, and disappeared without offering them any further annoyance. The chief heard their story on their return, and spoke with great complacency of the art which he possessed of putting such things to rights without any unpleasant bustle. On the way back the herd-boy gained a recollection to last him for life, and to suggest an incident in _Waverley_. At nightfall they bivouacked on one of those bare moors that so much appalled Andrew Fairservice, swept by a frosty wind which did not much trouble the hardy escort.