Every day he came to their house to take his morning draught.

Meanwhile he observed with minute attention all the avenues by which, when the signal for the slaughter should be given, the Macdonalds might attempt to escape to the hills; and he reported the result of his observations to Hamilton.
Hamilton fixed five o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of February for the deed.

He hoped that, before that time, he should reach Glencoe with four hundred men, and should have stopped all the earths in which the old fox and his two cubs,-so Mac Ian and his sons were nicknamed by the murderers,--could take refuge.

But, at five precisely, whether Hamilton had arrived or not, Glenlyon was to fall on, and to slay every Macdonald under seventy.
The night was rough.

Hamilton and his troops made slow progress, and were long after their time.