“Are the Scots then again inclined to his majesty’s cause?  Were I King Charles, I would not trust myself to them,” Harry said.  “They sold his father, and would sell him—­at least Argyll and the knaves with him would do so.”

“I like not these cold, calculating men of the north, myself,” Prince Rupert said, “and trust them as little.  Nor would my cousin venture himself again among them, if he took my advice.  His majesty, however, is no more given to the taking of advice than was his father before him, unless it be of Buckingham and Wilmot, and other dissolute young lords, whose counsel and company are alike evil for him.”

The same afternoon the fleet sailed for Holland, the four merchantmen accompanying it.  Upon their arrival there Harry sold the three ships which he had taken, together with such cargo as was found in their holds.  He sold also the cargo of the Lass of Devon, leaving the ship itself, as he had promised, to the captain, its owner, and making him and the sailors a handsome present for the way they stood by him and worked the ship during the action.  The rest of the proceeds he divided between the officers and men who had sailed with him, and finding that these were ready still to share his fortunes, he formed them into a regiment for the service of the king, enlisting another hundred Royalists, whom he found there well-nigh starving, in his ranks.

It was at the end of April, 1650, that Harry reached Hamburg, and a month later came the news of the defeat and death of the Earl of Montrose.  He had two months before sailed from Hamburg to the Orkneys, where he had landed with a thousand men.  Crossing to the mainland he had marched down into Sunderland.  There he had met a body of cavalry under Colonel Strachan, in a pass in the parish of Kincardine, now called Craigchonichan, or the Rock of Lamentation.  The recruits he had raised in Orkney and the north fled at once.  The Scotch and Germans he had brought with him fought bravely, but without effect, and were utterly defeated, scattering in all directions.  Montrose wandered for many days in disguise, but was at last captured, and was brought to Edinburgh with every indignity.  He was condemned to death by the Covenanters, and executed.  So nobly did he bear himself at his death that the very indignities with which Argyll and his minions loaded him, in order to make him an object of derision to the people, failed in their object, and even those who hated him most were yet struck with pity and admiration at his noble aspect and bearing.  Argyll stood at a balcony to see him pass, and Montrose foretold a similar fate for this double-dyed traitor, a prediction which was afterward fulfilled.  Harry deeply regretted the loss of this gallant and chivalrous gentleman.

CHAPTER XX.

With the scotch army.