Remembering the dying desire of their leader on the day after the battle, the Highland chiefs liberated all the prisoners on parole of honour not to serve against the King, Colonel Fergusson of Craigdarroch (notwithstanding all the exertions of his generous rival Finland) "being excepted," says Captain Crichton, in his Memoirs, "on account of his more than ordinary zeal for the new establishment." In those days the uncertain means of communication between towns, and the great deficiency of certain information of public events, caused many strange and varying rumours of the Highland war to be circulated in the Lowlands, where the only newspaper was the _Caledonius Mercurius_, which had been published occasionally since the Restoration. But the astounding intelligence of the victory at Killycrankie, and the fall of Dundee, spread like wildfire through the low country, to which he had so long been a terror and scourge. The defeat of Cannon at the Haughs of Cromdale, and the utter prostration of James's banner in the north, was soon followed by his disaster at the Boyne, in Ireland, where the loss of a decisive battle compelled him again to seek refuge in France. Poor Lilian, at home in the then secluded capital of Scotland, heard of those stirring events at long intervals; and to her they were a source of deep interest, and of many a sigh and hour of tears; but of Walter she heard no tidings. Whether he lay mouldering in the Pass of Killycrankie, among the haughs of Cromdale, or was wandering among the wildest fastnesses of the north, with the doom of proscription and treason hanging over him, she knew not; and time in no way soothed or alleviated the agonies of her suspense. On the return of Colonel Fergusson, whose apostacy had opened an easy path to preferment under the new order of affairs, she learned some faint rumours of his departure to France with the other officers of Dundee--for that horizon where the sun of the exiled Jacobites was setting--the lonely palace of St. Germain. Though the tidings fell like ice on the heart of the poor girl, any certainty was preferable to suspense; and with her good Aunt Grisel, she could only weep for the poor youth they loved so well, and pray and hope for happier times. To lighten the solitude his absence caused, she could not even hope for a letter; all intercourse with the court of the exiled King being proscribed under pain of banishment and death; and thus slowly the melancholy summer of 1690 passed on.