Having made such a narrow escape from transportation, Rob went home to end his days in comparative peace. He turned Roman Catholic in his old age, not having been hitherto much exercised by religious considerations. When a notorious judge of our time astonished or amused the public by taking the same step, a kinsman of his remarked to me, “Old Harry” (his lordship’s nickname in the family) “likes that sort of thing done for him.” This may have been the case of the Red Macgregor. Yet Scott has a story to show a deeper strain of feeling in him. When towards the end of his life he expressed contrition for some acts in it, and his wife would have laughed away those scruples, he rebuked her with, “You have put strife between me and the best men of the country; and now you would put enmity between me and my God.” The incident would at least fit Scott’s conception of the haughty virago whom he names Helen, while her real name is given as Mary, and her character has been represented in another light. As to Rob’s religious impressions in earlier days, an English traveller, two generations after his death, reports, on the authority of an unnamed witness, a story of his cheating a poor widow out of her only cow, then being moved by a sermon against dishonesty to give it back, promising the minister to amend his ways of business.
The Old Adam came out in Rob when in his last years he had a quarrel with the Appin Stewarts, a branch of whom were his neighbours in Glenfinlas. This was settled honourably by a little blood-letting in a broadsword duel between him and Stewart of Invernahyle, whose adventures in the ’45 were to give Scott more than one hint for _Waverley_. On his death-bed, a visit being announced from one of those hereditary enemies, the Maclarens, “Throw my plaid round me,” he desired, “and bring me my claymore, dirk, and pistols--it shall never be said that a foeman saw Rob Roy Macgregor defenceless and unarmed!” To this story is tacked on the somewhat hackneyed incident of a priest labouring to extract from the dying man some expression of forgiveness, to which he consented, with a plain hint for his son standing by: “I forgive my enemies; but see you to them, Rob.” We shall see presently how young Robin carried out such an injunction. The _Caledonian Mercury_ announces the “Highland partisan’s” death at the end of 1734.