They set forward on this crusade in weather which would
have rendered any other troops incapable of marching, but which in
reality gave these active mountaineers advantages over a less hardy
enemy. In defiance of a superior army lying upon the Borders, under
Field-Marshal Wade, they besieged and took Carlisle, and soon afterwards
prosecuted their daring march to the southward.
As Colonel Mac-Ivor's regiment marched in the van of the clans, he and
Waverley, who now equalled any Highlander in the endurance of fatigue,
and was become somewhat acquainted with their language, were perpetually
at its head. They marked the progress of the army, however, with very
different eyes. Fergus, all air and fire, and confident against the world
in arms, measured nothing but that every step was a yard nearer London.
He neither asked, expected, nor desired any aid except that of the clans
to place the Stuarts once more on the throne; and when by chance a few
adherents joined the standard, he always considered them in the light of
new claimants upon the favours of the future monarch, who, he concluded,
must therefore subtract for their gratification so much of the bounty
which ought to be shared among his Highland followers.
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