The hesitation of the Athol men was at an end.

Many of them had lurked, during the fight, among the crags and birch trees of Killiecrankie, and, as soon as the event of the day was decided, had emerged from those hiding places to strip and butcher the fugitives who tried to escape by the pass.

The Robertsons, a Gaelic race, though bearing a Saxon name, gave in at this conjuncture their adhesion to the cause of the exiled king.

Their chief Alexander, who took his appellation from his lordship of Struan, was a very young man and a student at the University of Saint Andrew's.

He had there acquired a smattering of letters, and had been initiated much more deeply into Tory politics.