two hundred horses, numberless herds of sheep and goats, and every thing
else that belonged to these miserable people. Lamentable was the case of
the women and children that escaped the butchery; the mountains were
covered with a deep snow, the rivers impassable, storm and tempest
filled the air and added to the horrors and darkness of the night, and
there were no houses to shelter them within many miles."[1]

Such was the awful massacre of Glencoe, an event which has left an
indelible and execrable stain upon the memory of William of Orange. The
records of Indian warfare can hardly afford a parallel instance of
atrocity: and this deed, coupled with his deliberate treachery in the
Darien scheme, whereby Scotland was for a time absolutely ruined, is
sufficient to account for the little estimation in which the name of the
"great Whig deliverer" is still regarded in the valleys of the North.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Memoirs of Sir Ewen Cameron of Locheill_.]




THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE


Do not lift him from the bracken,
Leave him lying where he fell--
Better bier ye cannot fashion:
None beseems him half so well
As the bare and broken heather,