To pose in the guise of a captain of militia was not Duncan Cameron's only role. Having impressed his martial importance upon all, he next went among the settlers as a comrade. He could chat at ease in Gaelic, and this won the confidence of the Highlanders. Some of the colonists were invited to his table. These he treated with studied kindness, and he furnished them with such an abundance of good food that they felt disgust for the scant {71} and humble fare allowed them at the settlement. At the same time Cameron began to make bold insinuations in his conversation. He had, he said, heard news from the interior that a body of Indians would raid them in the spring. He harped upon the deplorable state in which the settlers were living; out of fellow-feeling for them, he said, he would gladly act as their deliverer. Why did they not throw themselves upon the mercies of the North-West Company? In their unhappy condition, abandoned, as he hinted, by Lord Selkirk to their own resources, there was but one thing for them to do. They must leave the Red River far behind, and he would guarantee that the Nor'westers would assist them. As a result of Cameron's intrigues, signs of wavering allegiance were soon in evidence. One of the settlers in particular, George Campbell, became a traitor in the camp. Campbell had negotiated with Lord Selkirk personally during Selkirk's visit to Sutherlandshire. Now he complained vigorously of his treatment since leaving Scotland, and was in favour of accepting the terms which Cameron, as a partner in the North-West Company, offered. As many colonists as desired it, said Cameron, would be transported by the {72} Nor'westers free of charge to Montreal or other parts of Canada. A year's provisions would be supplied to them, and each colonist would be granted two hundred acres of fertile land. Tempting bribes of money were offered some of them as a bait. An influential Highlander, Alexander M'Lean, was promised two hundred pounds from Cameron's own pocket, on condition that he would take his family away. Several letters which were penned by the sham officer during the winter of 1815 can still be read. 'I am glad,' he wrote to a couple of settlers in February, 'that the eyes of some of you are getting open at last ... and that you now see your past follies in obeying the unlawful orders of a plunderer, and I may say, of a highway robber, for what took place here last spring can be called nothing else but manifest robbery.'