ce's daring and romantic
attempt to win a Kingdom with seven swords, trusting sublimely in the
loyalty of his devoted Highlanders, may better be imagined than described.
Donald Roy flung up his bonnet in a wild hurrah, Aileen beamed pride and
happiness, and Creagh's volatile Irish heart was in the hilltops. If I had
any doubts of the issue I knew better than to express them.

But we were shortly recalled to our more immediate affairs. Before we got
back to the inn one of those cursed placards offering a reward for my
arrest adorned the wall, and in front of it a dozen open-mouthed yokels
were spelling out its purport. Clearly there was no time to be lost in
taking Volney's advice. We hired a chaise and set out for London within
the hour. 'Twas arranged that Captain Macdonald and Hamish Gorm should
push on at once to Montagu Grange with Aileen, while I should lie in
hiding at the lodgings of Creagh until my wounds permitted of my
travelling without danger. That Volney would not rest without attempting
to discover the whereabouts of Miss Macleod I was well assured, and no
place of greater safety for the present occurred to me than the seclusion
of the Grange with my brother Charles and the family servants to watch
over her. As for myself, I was not afraid of their hanging me, but I was
not minded to play into the hands of Volney by letting myself get cooped
up in prison for many weeks pending a trial while he renewed his cavalier
wooing of the maid.

Never have I spent a more doleful time than that which followed. For one
thing my wounds healed badly, causing me a good deal of trouble. Then too
I was a prisoner no less than if I had been in The Tower itself. If
occasionally at night I ventured forth the fear of discovery was always
with me. Tony Creagh was the best companion in the world, at once tender
as a mother and gay as a schoolboy, but he could not be at home all day
and night, and as he was agog to be joining the Prince in the North he
might leave any day. Meanwhile he brought me the news of the town from the
coffee-houses: how Sir Robert Walpole was dead; how the Camerons under
Lochiel, the Macdonalds under Young Clanranald, and the Macphersons under
Cluny had rallied to the side of the Prince and were expected soon to be
defeated by Sir John Cope, the Commander-in-Chief of the Government army
in Scotland; how Balmerino and Leath had already shipped for Edinburgh to
join the insurgent army; how Beauclerc had bet