This was on the eve of the day fixed upon by the Jacobite members for their departure from Edinburgh. In the meantime, however, the Marquis of Athole had pleaded for a further delay, and this had been agreed to at a meeting from which Dundee happened to be absent. When informed of the new arrangement, he refused to be bound by it. In vain Balcarres urged that his departure would give the alarm, and frustrate their designs. He replied that he had promised to meet a number of his friends outside the city, and that he did not wish to disappoint them. It was then that, going forth, he gathered his fifty troopers about him and galloped through the streets of Edinburgh. To a friend who called out to inquire where he was going, he is reported to have cried back, as he waved his hat, ‘Wherever the spirit of Montrose shall direct me.’ Dundee’s road to Stirling skirted the base of the Castle rock. As he approached he was recognised by the Duke of Gordon, who was ‘in a manner blocked up by the western rabble,’ and who signalled that he desired to speak with him. Equipped as he was, he performed the almost incredible feat of scrambling up the precipitous crag, as far as a postern gate, at which he held conference with the Governor. In the course of the conversation he urged the Duke to delegate the command of the stronghold to his subordinate Winrhame, an experienced and trustworthy soldier, and to retire into the Highlands for the purpose of raising his clansmen in support of King James. But Gordon’s timidity suggested a ready and plausible excuse. A soldier, he said, could not in honour quit the post that had been assigned to him.