had several sons and daughters. When one of them, Colonel John Macdonald, was presented to George IV., the king said to the courtiers near him, 'This gentleman is the son of a lady to whom my family owe a great obligation.'

And where was the Prince after he had quitted Portree that July morning, for it was almost daybreak when he entered the boat, and took a last farewell of Donald Roy Macdonald? The latter indeed paid dearly for the part that he had taken. After quitting the Prince, he hurried to Kingsburgh's house and Mugstat, to tell Lady Margaret Macdonald and the former that the Chevalier was safely off; but, before long, he was compelled to hide to avoid imprisonment by the military. He went 'a-skulking,' as it was called, when any of the unfortunate Jacobites were compelled to conceal themselves from their enemies.

He was obliged, wounded as he was, to conceal himself for eight weeks in three different caves, living only upon food that Lady Macdonald brought him herself. The flies and midges bit his wound; and, wrapped in his plaid, afraid to venture out in the daytime for fear of discovery, he sat by day in dark caverns, with no other couch by night than the purple heather on the mountains. He, too, was freed by the Act of Indemnity in 1747. The boat that bore the Pretender away from Portree con

The Prince lands in Raasay.

251 tained young Raasay, the Macleods, and the boatmen. After a little friendly conversation, the Prince, wearied, no doubt, by his long wanderings, fell asleep. No adventures disturbed his slumbers, and, after a voyage of ten miles, he and his faithful companions landed at Glam, in the island of Raasay. His adventures there and elsewhere I shall tell you in another chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD: HIS FINAL WANDERINGS AND ESCAPE-CAMERON OF LOCHIEL

THE CAMERON CLAN AND ITS COUNTRY.

'Where now thy honours, brave Lochiel ?
The braided plume's torn from thy brow;

What must thy haughty spirit feel,

When skulking like the mountain roe?'

Lochiel's Farewell.-GRIEVE.

ELL might Flora Macdonald have felt anxious about her beloved prince, whose

adventures were yet to be varied and dangerous before his final escape from his pursuers. The island of Raasay, where he and his companions landed, was close to the mainland. After his sail of ten miles in an open boat, and his previous wanderings in Skye, the Prince longed for repose; but the soldiers employed by the Duke of Cumberland's emissaries had burnt all the best houses on the island, beside committing great depredations on the inhabitants.

However, the necessity of the hour

Condition of the Prince.

253

forced the hapless Prince to put up with a very mean shelter. A shepherd had erected a miserable little hovel on the shore, to shelter him from the violent storms that devastate from time to time the western coast of Scotland. In this hovel the Prince gratefully made a hearty dinner off the flesh of a roasted kid and some oat cake. No wonder that, when he had dined, while walking on a slip of greensward outside the hut, and with the burnt houses of the poor islanders before his eyes, he bitterly exclaimed that 'his fate was hard!' He was much affected by the recital of the misery that the rebellion had brought on the simple islanders of Raasay; yet, with the elasticity of his sanguine disposition, before he went to rest, he declared his conviction that 'he was reserved for some good,' and 'that rather than fall into his enemy's hands,' he would pass 'another ten years in that skulking manner.'

It was Malcolm Macleod's duty to watch Charles Edward, as he slept, lying on his bed of heather in so mean a hovel. Although at this time the Prince was in safety (for Raasay was well affected to his cause), and young Raasay, being the chief's son, could procure him ample food from his own people, the Prince's slumbers were often broken by fitful dreams and starts. Did he, as he lay there, watched by love and devotion, ever fancy himself in the lovely Campagna round Rome, where, as a boy, he

had hunted and shot, dreaming dreams of wresting from the usurper the crown that his father had lost? Perchance it was so, for Malcolm often heard him mutter in his sleep broken sentences in French and Italian; and, as he started in his slumber, the hapless Prince often exclaimed, 'O God! poor Scotland!' The cause that he had lost, at Culloden, he believed to be the best way of furthering the happiness of the Highlanders; yet, while even those whose fahers fought and suffered for Prince Charles in 1745 must rejoice that he did not succeed, how loveable, how true, how noble was that Prince's character, even his enemies must feel. With a restlessness that probably resulted from feeling so hunted and pursued, Prince Charles declared he could not remain at Raasay, but must return to Skye. His friends represented that as Raasay was a wild and secluded spot, Charles was secure there, especially as Donald Roy was in Skye, and ready to warn them in case his retreat was suspected.

There was only one stranger in the island, who had come there to sell tobacco; but as he did not depart when his business was done, the Prince and his attendants suspected he was a spy. Watches were stationed all round the hut to guard it. One day the Highland gillies, in Raasay's pay, gave the Prince and his friends the unwelcome tidings that the so-called tobacco salesman was coming near the hut.