This was the beginning of a series of marches and counter-marches on the part of the two generals, which lasted far into June, without any advantage on either side.  On one occasion a party of the Macleans of Lochbuy, marching to join Dundee in Badenoch, came to blows with some of Livingstone’s dragoons; and there were other skirmishes, of no material result, at none of which was either general present in person.  More than once Dundee was in striking distance of Mackay; but he never found himself in a position to engage with sufficient assurance of victory.  A defeat he dared not risk; and even victory, unless complete enough to need no second blow, had its dangers.  An army which considered the safe storage of his booty as the first duty of a successful soldier could not safely be trusted to make good the result of a doubtful battle.  And in fact he found his forces each day diminishing as food became more scarce in those barren wilds, or as some lucky raid necessitated a departure for home with the prize.  At length, wisely determining to sanction what he could not prevent, and feeling that even his iron frame and dauntless spirit were in need of rest, Dundee dismissed the clans for the present, on their giving a promise to join him again when he should require them.  Keeping only some two hundred of the Macleans with him, he returned to his old quarters, on the pressing invitation of Lochiel, who swore to him that while there was a cow in Lochaber neither he nor his men should want.  Mackay did not attempt to follow him.  At such a game of hide-and-seek he saw that his men were no match for the active light-marching Highlanders.  He accordingly put garrisons into certain fortified parts of Invernessshire and Perthshire, sent the rest into quarters, and himself repaired to Edinburgh.

From the middle of June to the end of July the war therefore languished.  But Dundee was not idle.  The arts of diplomacy were as familiar to him as the arts of war.  He still maintained an active correspondence with the neutral chiefs, and kept Melfort well informed of all he had done and proposed to do for his master’s service.  I shall conclude this chapter with an extract from the last despatch he sent to Ireland.  It is long; but it gives so graphic an account of his proceedings since the muster at Lochaber, of the state of the country, and the relative positions and prospects of the two parties, that its length may be excused.  It also shows, what one would not perhaps have otherwise surmised, that the writer had some little touch of humour.  The letter is dated from Moy, in Lochaber, June 27th, 1689.  I omit the first part, which seems to refer to some complaints Melfort had made of his having been ill-spoken of by Dundee.