The President had not waited for the decision of the Assembly. In virtue of the power given him at an earlier meeting, to imprison whomsoever he suspected to be acting against the common interest, he had sent a hundred men of the Earl of Leven’s regiment into Fifeshire, and a like number into Forfarshire, to apprehend the two noblemen. Balcarres had already been brought back to Edinburgh and cast into prison. The knowledge that Dundee still had a number of his old troopers with him, did not help to stimulate the zeal of those to whom the duty of effecting his capture had been committed. Moreover, there lay between him and them two rivers, which necessitated a circuitous march. There had, consequently, been ample time for him to be informed of their approach; and when they reach Dudhope, they learnt that their errand would be fruitless. Taking what was destined to be a last farewell of his wife and of his infant son, he retired towards the north. But his retreat was not a flight. One of those who sallied forth with him, has described in scholarly Latin hexameters, how the gallant Graham mounted on his charger, brilliant in scarlet, in the face of the town, drew out in long line his band of brave youths, all mounted and in bright armour; how, on the very top of the Law of Dundee, he unfurled the royal banner for the Northern war; and how he triumphantly led the little troop of those who dared stand for the King in his misfortunes, over the lofty ridges of the Seidlaws, by Balmuir and Tealing, to his wife’s jointure-house, in Glen Ogilvy. There he remained three days; and Sir Thomas Livingstone, with his hundred men, marched after him, in the hope of being able to take him by surprise. But, ‘though very well and secretly led on,’ he was again too late. He returned to Dundee, whence he sent information of ‘his mislucked design’ to Mackay, whom William had appointed to the supreme command of the troops sent to Scotland, and where he was told to await the arrival of the General himself.