Dundee was sorely disappointed at this untoward incident. So fully did he expect to be joined by Keppoch’s men that he had already written to the magistrates of Elgin to prepare quarters for nine hundred or a thousand Highlanders besides his own cavalry. And now, instead of turning round on his pursuer, he was obliged to make his way through Stratherrick to Invergarry and Kilcummin, and thence into the wilds of Badenoch. Throughout this march, Dundee did not relax his efforts to enlist recruits, and he succeeded in engaging the greater part of the men of note to be ready at call to join in his master’s service. Feeling that he might now depend on the active co-operation of the Highland chiefs, about the sixth or seventh of May, from the isolated farm of Presmukerach, in a secluded district between Cluny and Dalwhinnie, he issued a royal letter, calling upon the clans to meet him in Lochaber on the eighteenth of the month. In the meantime, however, it was not Dundee’s intention to remain idle. On the 9th of May, he was at Blair. Thence he advanced next day to Dunkeld, where, coming unexpectedly upon an agent of the new Government, who, with the help of the military, had been gathering the revenues of the district, he relieved him of the money, and secured the arms of his escort. This was but an incident. The real object of the raid was seventeen miles further. Dundee had received information that William Blair of Blair, and his lieutenant Pollock were raising a troop in the county of Perth, for the new Government; and he had resolved to interfere with their recruiting. Leaving Dunkeld in the middle of the night, he was at Perth by two o’clock in the morning, with seventy followers. No attack was expected, and no resistance was offered. Blair and Pollock were taken prisoners in their beds; and several officers of the new levies were also captured. Secure from surprise, the invading troopers carried out their work deliberately and thoroughly; and when they retired, about eleven o’clock next morning, the spoil they took with them included arms, gunpowder, public-money, and forty horses. It is said that, on being brought before Dundee, Blair had protested with some indignation against the treatment to which he had been subjected, and that the Viscount had curtly replied, ‘You take prisoners for the Prince of Orange, and we take prisoners for King James, and there’s an end of it.’