mosstroopers of the border, how the chief of Henderland had been hung over the gate of the castle in which he had prepared a banquet for the King; how John Armstrong and his thirty-six horsemen, when they came forth to welcome their sovereign, had scarcely been allowed time to say a single prayer before they were all tied up and turned off.  Nor probably was the Secretary ignorant of the means by which Sixtus the Fifth had cleared the ecclesiastical state of outlaws.  The eulogists of that great pontiff tell us that there was one formidable gang which could not be dislodged from a stronghold among the Apennines.  Beasts of burden were therefore loaded with poisoned food and wine, and sent by a road which ran close to the fastness.  The robbers sallied forth, seized the prey, feasted and died; and the pious old Pope exulted greatly when he heard that the corpses of thirty ruffians, who had been the terror of many peaceful villages, had been found lying among the mules and packages.  The plans of the Master of Stair were conceived in the spirit of James and of Sixtus; and the rebellion of the mountaineers furnished what seemed to be an excellent opportunity for carrying those plans into effect.  Mere rebellion, indeed, he could have easily pardoned.  On Jacobites, as Jacobites, he never showed any inclination to bear hard.  He hated the Highlanders, not as enemies of this or that dynasty, but as enemies of law, of industry and of trade.  In his private correspondence he applied to them the short and terrible form of words in which the implacable Roman pronounced the doom of Carthage.  His project was no less than this, that the whole hill country from sea to sea, and the neighbouring islands, should be wasted with fire and sword, that the Camerons, the Macleans, and all the branches of the race of Macdonald, should be rooted out.  He therefore looked with no friendly eye on schemes of reconciliation, and, while others were hoping that a little money would set everything right, hinted very intelligibly his opinion that whatever money was to be laid out on the clans would be best laid out in the form of bullets and bayonets.  To the last moment he continued to flatter himself that the rebels would be obstinate, and would thus furnish him with a plea for accomplishing that great social revolution on which his heart was set.224 The letter is still extant in which he directed the commander of the forces in Scotland how to act if the Jacobite chiefs should not come in before the end of December.  There is something strangely terrible in the calmness and conciseness with which the instructions are given.  “Your troops will destroy entirely the country of Lochaber, Lochiel’s lands, Keppoch’s, Glengarry’s and Glencoe’s.  Your power shall be large enough.  I hope the soldiers will not trouble the government with prisoners."225