There was therefore no danger of mutiny.

There was as little danger of desertion.

Indeed the very feelings which most powerfully impel other soldiers to desert kept the Highlander to his standard.

If he left it, whither was he to go?
All his kinsmen, all his friends, were arrayed round it.

To separate himself from it was to separate himself for ever from his family, and to incur all the misery of that very homesickness which, in regular armies, drives so many recruits to abscond at the risk of stripes and of death.