to the slaughter of Glencoe, the breach of faith, the breach of hospitality, the twelve days of feigned friendship and conviviality, of morning calls, of social meals, of healthdrinking, of cardplaying, were not mentioned by the Edinburgh correspondent of the Paris Gazette; and we may therefore confidently infer that those circumstances were as yet unknown even to inquisitive and busy malecontents residing in the Scottish capital within a hundred miles of the spot where the deed had been done.  In the south of the island the matter produced, as far as can now be judged, scarcely any sensation.  To the Londoner of those days Appin was what Caffraria or Borneo is to us.  He was not more moved by hearing that some Highland thieves had been surprised and killed than we are by hearing that a band of Amakosah cattle stealers has been cut off, or that a bark full of Malay pirates has been sunk.  He took it for granted that nothing had been done in Glencoe beyond what was doing in many other glens.  There had been a night brawl, one of a hundred night brawls, between the Macdonalds and the Campbells; and the Campbells had knocked the Macdonalds on the head.

By slow degrees the whole truth came out.  From a letter written at Edinburgh about two months after the crime had been committed, it appears that the horrible story was already current among the Jacobites of that city.  In the summer Argyle’s regiment was quartered in the south of England, and some of the men made strange confessions, over their ale, about what they had been forced to do in the preceding winter.  The nonjurors soon got hold of the clue, and followed it resolutely; their secret presses went to work; and at length, near a year after the crime had been committed, it was published to the world.236 But the world was long incredulous.  The habitual mendacity of the Jacobite libellers had brought on them an appropriate punishment.  Now, when, for the first time, they told the truth, they were supposed to be romancing.  They complained bitterly that the story, though perfectly authentic, was regarded by the public as a factious lie.237 So late as the year 1695, Hickes, in a tract in which he endeavoured to defend his darling tale of the Theban legion against the unanswerable argument drawn from the silence of historians, remarked that it might well be doubted whether any historian would make mention of the massacre of Glencoe.  There were in England, he said, many thousands of well educated men who had never heard of that massacre, or who regarded it as a mere fable.238

Nevertheless the punishment of some of the guilty began very early.  Hill, who indeed can hardly be called guilty, was much disturbed.  Breadalbane, hardened as he was, felt the stings of conscience or the dread of retribution.  A few days after the Macdonalds had returned to their old dwellingplace, his steward visited the ruins of the house of Glencoe, and endeavoured to persuade the sons of the murdered