Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/75

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a.d. 1692.]
THE MASSACRE OF GLENCOE.
61

But, with all the Judas-like deceit with which he carried on his hellish design, that evening two men were heard lamenting that they had something to do that they did not relish. A suspicion was awoke, and one of the sons of Mac Ian went at midnight to Glenlyon's lodgings to see if he could discover anything. In confirmation of his worst suspicions he found him and his men all up and armed. Yet he suffered himself to be persuaded by the villain that they were called to a sudden march to chastise some of the Glengarry clan for marauding; and the young man returned home and went to bed. Glenlyon bad said, "Do you think I would do anything against my own niece and her husband?"

At five in the morning, though Hamilton had not arrived, this bloodthirsty traitor commenced the massacre by murdering his host and all his family. Lindsay did the same by his host, old Mac Ian, and his family; and Barbour shot down his host and family in the same manner. Then the soldiers at every hut imitated their example, and speedily there was a hewing and shooting down of victims flying from the huts to the defiles for escape. Men, women, children, pleading most piteously, were ruthlessly murdered. But, fortunately, the sound of the firearms roused the whole glen at once, and the rush of the affrighted people was too simultaneous to allow of their being killed. The greater part of them escaped in the darkness to the hills, for Hamilton was not arrived to blockade the defiles.

Death of Admiral Carter.

The sanguinary haste of Glenlyon had saved the majority. The two sons of Mac Ian were amongst the number who escaped. Above thirty people, however, were massacred, and an old man of seventy, unable to fly, was brutally stabbed.

But those who had escaped the sword and musket only escaped to the snow-covered rocks to perish, many of them, of cold and famine, for the wretches set fire to everything in the valley, and left it one black and hideous desert. When the news of this terrible affair at length spread, the public.