This incident, indeed, belongs to a later period of clan history, which we take up at the time when the Macgregors are seen forced apart into two main bodies in the north and south of western Perthshire, while not entirely uprooted from the central glens. Under James III., a chief known as Gregor Mhor flourished so well as to recover part of the clan territory from its oppressors, and to raise its head in the world. A younger son of his, Duncan, surnamed the Hero, also gained renown and such social advantage as went with a Campbell bride; but he fatally fell out with the head of the Breadalbane family. More than one chief of this period might have answered to Roderick Dhu’s reputation. We read of James IV. making a hunting expedition to Balquhidder; and on another occasion it is said that this king rode alone from Stirling to Perth by the wild borders he [Illustration: LOCH ACHRAY] congratulated himself on having pacified for a time. James V. also, in historic record as well as in romance, trusted himself on hunting trips into the Perthshire Highlands, when the troubles that had gathered head during his minority made such visits more truly adventurous. At this time one Duncan Macgregor, surnamed Laideus, who seems a prototype of Rob Roy in a ruder time, became for half a century the bugbear of the central Highlands, sometimes driven into far Lochaber, but returning to work havoc and slaughter, till at last he was caught and executed by the Campbells. By fits and starts, the later Jameses were able to bring a rough machinery of repression to bear upon the disorders of the Highlands. The Macgregors were not worse than a dozen other clans; but they were within shorter reach than those western and Hebridean stocks, who yet proved not beyond the arm of law as put in force on James V.’s voyage to what had long been the quasi-independent domains of the Lords of the Isles. Then the sons of Alpin had the misfortune to play the reiver too near the half-settled Highland line, where the noise of their exploits echoed in Perth and Stirling; and the king could not follow his sport through “lone Glenartney’s hazel shade” without a chance of perilous encounter. Their most powerful foes, moreover, were close at hand to carry out the rough justice of the border. Once and again we hear of the Macgregors being “put to the horn” and of “letters of fire and sword” granted against them, usually to the Campbells, who, adapting themselves better to new conditions, extended their possessions and influence at the expense of less prudent neighbours. To be at odds with the law is in itself demoralising; and the harassed clan grew but more reckless and insolent in the persecutions brought on them by their repeated offences. All through the sixteenth century they appear drawing towards that doom that left them landless and nameless.