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he next ordered his emiflaries to bring off
the children, and thus they forcibly car¬
ried away the unhappy mother and three
infants, leaving the houfe in a blaze,
and dragging them about the diftance
of a mile or two to the cottage of one of
the ravagers confederates ; where the firft
ruffian infilled that the the poor helplefs
lady, ffiould unrefiftingly fubmit to grati-
_fy his foul defire, or that inftant fee her
innocent babes butchered before her eyes !
Prayers, tears and ftruggling were all ufe-
lefs : Life juft fupported her to behold one
of the ruffians maffacre one of the
children! She then fainted away, and be¬
tween the agonies of life and death, the
villian not only perpetrated a moft brutal
ravifhment, but had the ftill more unex¬
ampled barbarity, to fuffer his vile accom¬
plices to commit the fame execrable action.
In the mean time Maclean having walked
round his houfe, having feen part of it on
fire, and obferving no guards about it,
fuppofed then, that the alarm had been
rather from thieves, than from troops j he
re-entered his houfe, but feeing no body
but two or three lervants running wildly
to and fro in fearch of him and his wife,
of whom, with his children, he found he
had been rob’d ■, he was, you may be¬
lieve, in a ftate of the utmoft diftradtion !
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