M’Aulay, whose strength did not lie in oratory, intimated his wish that Lord Menteith should open the business of the council.  With great modesty, and at the same time with spirit, that young lord said, “he wished what he was about to propose had come from some person of better known and more established character.  Since, however, it lay with him to be spokesman, he had to state to the Chiefs assembled, that those who wished to throw off the base yoke which fanaticism had endeavoured to wreath round their necks, had not a moment to lose.  ‘The Covenanters,’” he said, “after having twice made war upon their sovereign, and having extorted from him every request, reasonable or unreasonable, which they thought proper to demand—­after their Chiefs had been loaded with dignities and favours—­after having publicly declared, when his Majesty, after a gracious visit to the land of his nativity, was upon his return to England, that he returned a contented king from a contented people,—­after all this, and without even the pretext for a national grievance, the same men have, upon doubts and suspicions, equally dishonourable to the King, and groundless in themselves, detached a strong army to assist his rebels in England, in a quarrel with which Scotland had no more to do than she has with the wars in Germany.  It was well,” he said, “that the eagerness with which this treasonable purpose was pursued, had blinded the junta who now usurped the government of Scotland to the risk which they were about to incur.  The army which they had dispatched to England under old Leven comprehended their veteran soldiers, the strength of those armies which had been levied in Scotland during the two former wars—­”

Here Captain Dalgetty endeavoured to rise, for the purpose of explaining how many veteran officers, trained in the German wars, were, to his certain knowledge, in the army of the Earl of Leven.  But Allan M’Aulay holding him down in his seat with one hand, pressed the fore-finger of the other upon his own lips, and, though with some difficulty, prevented his interference.  Captain Dalgetty looked upon him with a very scornful and indignant air, by which the other’s gravity was in no way moved, and Lord Menteith proceeded without farther interruption.

“The moment,” he said, “was most favourable for all true-hearted and loyal Scotchmen to show, that the reproach their country had lately undergone arose from the selfish ambition of a few turbulent and seditious men, joined to the absurd fanaticism which, disseminated from five hundred pulpits, had spread like a land-flood over the Lowlands of Scotland.  He had letters from the Marquis of Huntly in the north, which he should show to the Chiefs separately.  That nobleman, equally loyal and powerful was determined to exert his utmost energy in the common cause, and the powerful Earl of Seaforth was prepared to join the same standard.  From the Earl of Airly, and the Ogilvies in Angusshire, he had had communications