CHAPTER XV.
But if no faithless action stain Thy true and constant word, I'll make thee famous by my pen, And glorious by my sword.
I'll serve thee in such noble ways As ne'er were known before; I'll deck and crown thy head with bays, And love thee more and more .-- MONTROSE'S LINES.
We must now leave, with whatever regret, the valiant Captain Dalgetty, to recover of his wounds or otherwise as fate shall determine, in order briefly to trace the military operations of Montrose, worthy as they are of a more important page, and a better historian.

By the assistance of the chieftains whom we have commemorated, and more especially by the junction of the Murrays, Stewarts, and other clans of Athole, which were peculiarly zealous in the royal cause, he soon assembled an army of two or three thousand Highlanders, to whom he successfully united the Irish under Colkitto.

This last leader, who, to the great embarrassment of Milton's commentators, is commemorated in one of that great poet's sonnets, was properly named Alister, or Alexander M'Donnell, by birth a Scottish islesman, and related to the Earl of Antrim, to whose patronage he owed the command assigned him in the Irish troops.

In many respects he merited this distinction.

He was brave to intrepidity, and almost to insensibility; very strong and active in person, completely master of his weapons, and always ready to show the example in the extremity of danger.