A few days after Dundee left Edinburgh MacKay arrived, and now, as Dundee rode northward in hot haste, MacKay was on his track. Both were eager for a meeting, but the bitterness of it for Dundee was that he dared not run the risk. With all his appeals and all his riding, he had only a handful of mounted men, and the clans had not risen. It seemed as if his enterprise were futile, and that Scotland would not lift a hand for King James. He might be a commander-in-chief, but he was a commander of nobody; he might raise a standard, but it was only a vain show. It did not matter where he went or what he did; he was not a general, but a fugitive, a man to be neglected, and his following a handful of bandits. The rising was a thing to laugh at, and the report was current in the capital that he had absconded with one or two servants. This pretty description of his campaign had not reached his ears, but the humiliation of his situation burned into his proud heart. Much as he would have liked to meet MacKay, there remained for him no alternative but flight. Flight was the only word which could describe his journey, and as he planned his course on the morrow, how he would ride to Invergarry, and then return on his course, and then make his way to Cluny, he started to his feet and paced the room in a fury of anger. What better was he than a hare with the hounds after him, running for his life, and doubling in his track, fleeing here and dodging there, a cowering, timid, panting animal of the chase? "Damnation!" and Dundee flung himself out of the room, and paced up and down the side of the river.
There was a dim light upon the running water, and his thoughts turned to the West Country, to the streams he had often crossed and along whose bed he had sometimes ridden, as he hunted for his Covenanting prey. The Fates were just, for now the Whigs were the hunters and he was the hunted. He began to understand what it was to be ever on the alert for the approach of the enemy, to escape at the first sign of danger, to cross hills in full flight, and to be listening for the sound of the pursuer. As yet he had not to hide, but before many days were over he also may be skulking in moss-hags, and concealing himself in caves, and disguising himself in peasant's garments, he, John Graham of Claverhouse, and my Viscount of Dundee. The tables had turned with a vengeance, and the day of the godly had come. The hillmen would laugh when they heard of it, and the Conventicles would rejoice together. MacKay would be sitting in his quarters at Elgin that night making his plans also, but not for flight, and hardly for fighting. When officers arrest an outlaw, it is not called a battle any more than when hounds run a fox to his lair. MacKay would be arranging how to trap him, anticipating his ways of escape, and stopping all the earths, so that say, to-morrow, he might be quietly taken. It would not be a surrender; it would be a capture, and he would be sent to Edinburgh in charge of half a dozen English dragoons, and tried at Edinburgh, and condemned for treason against King William--King William.