Marching north against the loyal Highlanders, they left their compatriots, all of whom served without pay or remuneration till the conclusion of the siege, when the fortress was surrendered by the Duke of Gordon after a noble defence, and after being warned by a spectre--pale as he "who drew Priam's curtain at the dead of night"--in fact, by the wraith of the terrible Claverhouse in his buff coat, cuirass, and cavalier wig, all stained with gouts of blood, that he had been shot by a silver bullet on the field of Killycrankie. In one of the rooms of the old fortress this vision is alleged to have appeared to Colin, Earl of Balcarris, then the duke's prisoner, and the truth of the episode is admitted by a delirious biographer of the viscount, who affirms that he is frequently in communion with the ghost in question, and with others. The Earl of Leven, though colonel of infantry under Frederick Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg, and of a regiment which came over with the Prince of Orange, who made him Governor of Edinburgh Castle and Master of the Scottish ordnance, was a Whig noble, chiefly famous for the rapidity of his flight from Killycrankie, and the vigour with which he horsewhipped the Lady Morton Hall. It is said that he rode six miles from the Pass without drawing his bridle, though his regiment, the future 25th, and Hastings, the future 13th, were the only troops that made any stand against the victorious Highlanders. Leven's regiment having been raised in the capital while Sir John Hall, Knight, was Lord Provost, was designated of Edinburgh, and bore the insignia yet borne on its colours, the triple castle of the city, with its crest and motto, _Nisi Dominus Frustra_. As Leven's regiment--the same in which "my uncle Toby" fought at Landen, and with which he went to "mount guard in the trenches before the gate of St. Nicholas in his roquelaure"--it served in all King William's useless wars for the well-being of his darling Dutch, and all the great barrier towns of Europe have heard the drums of the 25th. It was the first British regiment which used the socket in lieu of the screw bayonet, which its lieutenant-colonel, Maxwell, adopted in imitation of the bayonets of the French Fusiliers. Prior to this, our bayonets were screwed into the muzzles of the muskets, and to fire with them fixed, was, of course, an impossibility. After fighting at Sheriffmuir, as Viscount Shannon's Foot, it served with distinction in the wars of the Spanish and Austrian succession, and shared in the disasters of Fontenoy, ere its soldiers had again to imbrue their hands in the blood of their own countrymen at Falkirk, at Culloden, and in defending the Comyn's Tower in the old Castle of Blair against Lord George Murray, till we find them again among the troops defeated at Val through the cowardice and incapacity of the Duke of Cumberland.