"’I want not your gold or your silver, sir!’ said my father, tossing the pieces on the bloody grass. ’Your money is the wages of treason to Scotland, and rebellion against King James. I heed not your frown, sir. God will now be the best judge between your cause and ours, after this fatal day. Keep your money, and I will, with your permission, retain the claymore; it may yet be drawn for King James the Eighth.’ "And without vailing his bonnet, or deigning to bestow a glance on Cumberland, he broke through the ranks of Wolfe’s regiment, and made off with all speed towards the mountains of the Grants’ country, where he hoped to remain in safe hiding until the clans gathered together once more, or the present danger had passed away. After concealing himself in the _Chlachdhian_, or sheltering-cave of Cairn-gorm, and after wandering for days in Duthil and Inverallan, and being sorely hunted and pressed by the parties of red-coats scouring and devastating the country, he found himself one night compelled to take refuge in the great fir forests of Grant of Rothiemurchus, the whole country from Lorn to the mouth of the Spey being infested with bands of the _sidier roy_. Beacons of destruction, by night and by day, blazed on hill and in valley, while the proud halls of long-descended chieftains and the green huts of their faithful vassals were given indiscriminately to the flames; and the shrieks of helpless women and children were borne on the breeze, which had so lately swelled with the _piobrachd_ and march of the Highlander. It was a sight indeed to make him thirst for vengeance, when nightly he looked forth from the cavern of the blue mountain to behold the sky red with the fires of the destroyer. But, alas! the neck of the Gael was bending beneath the foot of the stranger, and the power of the proud race who would never bend, was then broken. "To shut out sights and sounds which every where announced the downfall of Albyn, my father plunged into the recesses of the wild forest of Rothiemurchus, but his retreat was not unmarked. A party of king’s troops, Hessians I believe, clad in yellow uniform, beheld him from a neighbouring eminence, and despatched a party of ten men, to shoot or destroy him in any way they chose,—Cumberland having doomed to death all who wore the garb of the Celtic race. For nearly an hour these Georgian sleuth-hounds followed upon his track with murderous eagerness and precision, firing at intervals whenever he came in sight. Their fire he returned, and shot dead three with his Highland pistol.