Since the day Dundee rode away from Glenogilvie, after the scene with Jean, he was a man broken in heart, but he hid his private wound bravely, and gave himself with the fiercer energy to the king's business. Hither and thither through the Highlands he raced, so that he was described in letters of that day as "skipping from one hill to another like wildfire, which at last will vanish of itself for want of fuel," and "like an incendiary to inflame that cold country, yet he finds small encouragement." Anything more pathetic than this last endeavor of Dundee, except it be his death, cannot be imagined. The clans were not devoured with devotion to King James, and were not the victims of guileless enthusiasm; they were not the heroes of romance depicted by Jacobite poets and story-tellers: they were half-starved, entirely ignorant, fond of fighting, but largely intent on stealing. If there was any chance of a foray in which they could gather spoil, they were ready to fling themselves into the fray, but as soon as they had gained their end, they would make for the glens and leave their general in the lurch. Whether they would rise or not depended neither on the merits of William or James, but in the last issue upon their chiefs--and the chiefs were not easy to move.
Some of them were hostile, and most of them lukewarm; and Dundee drank the cup of humiliation as he canvassed for his cause from door to door. By pleading, by arguing, by cajoling, by threatening, by promising and by bribing, he got together some two thousand men, more or less, and he had also the remains of his cavalry. His king had, as usual, left him to fend for himself, and sent him nothing but an incapable Irish officer called Cannon and some ragged Irish recruits, while MacKay was watching him and following him with a well-equipped force. Now and again the sun shone on him and he had glimpses of victory, driving MacKay for days before him, and keeping up communication with Livingstone, who had come from Dundee with his dragoons, and was playing the part of traitor in MacKay's army--for Jean was still determined, with characteristic obstinacy and indifference to suspicion, to reap the fruit of her negotiation with Livingstone. It seemed as if Dundee would at least gain a few troops of cavalry, which would be a great advantage to him and a disquieting event for MacKay's army. But again the Fates were hostile, and misfortune dogged the Jacobite cause. MacKay got wind of the plot, Livingstone and his fellow-officers were arrested, and Jean's scheming, with all its weary expedients and bitter cost, came to naught.