The Fiery Cross Or The Vow of Montrose Author:Barbara Alexander Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ' News of battle ! news of battle ! Hark ! 'tis ringing down the street, And the archways and the pavement Bear the clang of hurrying feet!'... more » —Aytoun. ;HEN the good burghers of Aberdeen found Montrose so close to them, they were thoroughly dismayed. By a wonderful turn of fortune, the political position of their fair city had changed greatly since they and the Marquis had last met. Four or five years before, the Aberdeen burghers, loyal to King Charles, had resisted that enforced submission to the Scottish Covenant which Montrose, then a Covenanter, had forced them to yield at the point of the sword. In 1644, the Marquis returned to find the once loyal citizens Covenanters, while he himself, having become a Cavalier, was daring and planning themost venturesome deeds for the sake of a monarch whom once he had deemed a tyrant! The clan Gordon also, who in 1639 had been so devotedly loyal, had now, as it were, enlisted on the other side, although still at heart true to King Charles. A clan is bound to fight under the banner supported by its chief, and the Marquis of Huntly had neither forgotten nor forgiven Montrose's apparent want of good faith towards himself when the latter had led him as a prisoner to Edinburgh. Thus the greatest blemish on our hero's shield, the greatest stain upon his fame, was the means, humanly speaking, of his ultimate fate! Had the Gordons fought from the first side by side with the Grahams, perchance the tale of the great Scottish civil wars might have been a very different one to that recorded by history. Lord Lewis Gordon, a fair knightly youth, and Huntly's third son, had raised his father's clan in defence of the Covenant, although in 1639 the young chieftain had headed an enterprise for King Charles. Montrose'...« less