From Dudhope Dundee crossed the Grampians again for Inverness.  Here it had been arranged for him to meet Keppoch and the promised escort of Highlanders.  And here, accordingly, he found them; but he also found a state of things which gave him a lively foretaste of the character and conduct of his new allies.

Between the clan of Macdonald and the clan of Mackintosh there had existed for many centuries a deadly feud, the exact origin of which had long been lost in the mists of fable.  On the other hand, a good understanding had long existed between the Mackintoshes and the town of Inverness.  Though the town in those days consisted only of some five hundred mean buildings surrounded by a crazy wall, the busy little colony of artisans which inhabited it, and the occasional visit of a trading vessel to its port, had invested it among the Highlanders with the reputation of vast wealth.  Here was an opportunity for gratifying his love of revenge and his love of plunder which Keppoch was not the man to lose.  He advanced through the territory of the Mackintoshes, harrying and burning as he marched, up to the walls of Inverness.  For two days he lay before its crazy gates threatening fire and sword, while the burghers mustered to arms within, and the ministers exhorted them from the market-place.  Such was the state of affairs Dundee found when he and his troopers rode into the Highland camp on the first day of May.

Keppoch tried to excuse himself.  The town, he said, owed him money, and he sought only to recover his own.  On the other hand, the magistrates said that he had forced them to promise him four thousand marks.  Dundee answered that Keppoch had no warrant from him to be in arms, much less to plunder.  But it was not yet safe for him with his handful of horse to use such brave language to the chief at the head of his eight hundred claymores.  He therefore temporised.  By his advice the magistrates agreed to pay two thousand dollars:  half of this sum was raised on the spot with some difficulty:  for the other half Dundee gave his bond to Keppoch.  He also promised the magistrates that, when James was restored to his throne, the money should be refunded to them.  Dundee had saved the town, but for the present he had lost his allies.  Keppoch and his thieves, laden with the silver of Inverness and the cattle of the Mackintoshes, retired in dudgeon to their mountains.

But Dundee was destined to achieve something before he joined the muster at Lochaber.  After he had parted from Keppoch he turned westward down the valley of the Ness, by the noble castle of Glengarry, which Cumberland destroyed after Culloden, by Kilcummin, where Fort Augustus now stands, memorable in his eyes as the spot whence Montrose had led the clans to break the power of the Campbells at Inverlochy, and so southwards again through the forest of Badenoch to the Tay.  As he was painfully toiling through this vast and rugged recruiting-ground word was brought to him that