24

HISTORY OR ■ENGLAND.

forth, rushed on the soldiers who were about to level theirpieces at him, flung his plaid over their faces, and was gone ina moment.

Meanwhile Lindsay had knocked at the door of the oldChief and had asked for admission in friendly language. Thedoor was opened. Mac Ian, while putting on his clothes andcalling to his servants to bring some refreshment for his visitors,was shot through the head. Two of his attendants were slainwith him. His wife was already up and dressed in such fineryas the princesses of the rude Highland glens were accustomedto wear. The assassins pulled off her clothes and trinkets.The rings were not easily taken from her fingers; but a sol-dier tore them away with his teeth. She died on the follow-ing day.

The statesman, to whom chiefly this great crime is to beascribed, had planned it with consummate ability: but theexecution was complete in nothing but in guilt and infamy.A succession of blunders saved three fourths of the Glencoemen from the fate of their chief. All the moral qualities whichfit men to bear a part in a massacre Hamilton and Glenlyonpossessed in perfection. But neither seems to have had muchprofessional skill. Hamilton had arranged his plan withoutmaking allowance for bad weather, and this in a country andat a season when the weather was very likely to be bad. Theconsequence was that the fox earths, as he called them, werenot stopped in time. Glenlyon and his men committed the errorof despatching their hosts with firearms instead of using thecold steel. The peal and flash of gun after gun gave notice,from three different parts of the valley at once, that murderwas doing. From fifty cottages the half naked peasantry fledunder cover of the night to the recesses of their pathless glen.Even the sons of Mac Ian, who had been especially marked out