[Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott]@TWC D-Link book
Rob Roy

INTRODUCTION---( 1829) When the author projected this further encroachment on the patience of an indulgent public, he was at some loss for a title; a good name being very nearly of as much consequence in literature as in life
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It remained in possession of the magistrates before whom he was brought for examination, and now makes part of a small collection of arms belonging to the Author.

It is a Spanish-barrelled gun, marked with the letters R.M.C., for Robert MacGregor Campbell.
He was as good as his word, and shot MacLaren when between the stilts of his plough, wounding him mortally.
The aid of a Highland leech was procured, who probed the wound with a probe made out of a castock; _i.e._, the stalk of a colewort or cabbage.
This learned gentleman declared he would not venture to prescribe, not knowing with what shot the patient had been wounded.

MacLaren died, and about the same time his cattle were houghed, and his live stock destroyed in a barbarous manner.
Robin Oig, after this feat--which one of his biographers represents as the unhappy discharge of a gun--retired to his mother's house, to boast that he had drawn the first blood in the quarrel aforesaid.

On the approach of troops, and a body of the Stewarts, who were bound to take up the cause of their tenant, Robin Oig absconded, and escaped all search.
The doctor already mentioned, by name Callam MacInleister, with James and Ronald, brothers to the actual perpetrator of the murder, were brought to trial.

But as they contrived to represent the action as a rash deed committed by "the daft callant Rob," to which they were not accessory, the jury found their accession to the crime was Not Proven.


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