rather a small remnant of irreconcilable rebels
who had vowed undying enmity and revenge against Cumberland and his
soldiers. And indeed there was ample excuse for their hatred and
violence in the cruelties they saw practised all round them. Sixty of
their clansmen after surrendering themselves had been shipped off to the
colonies, all their own possessions and those of their neighbours had
been seized, and friends and kinsfolk had been brutally put to death.

Swooping down like mountain eagles on detached bands of soldiers, these
seven men wreaked instant vengeance on oppressors and informers, and
carried off arms and baggage in the face of larger bodies of the enemy.
To these men, ignorant, reckless, and lawless, Charles unhesitatingly
confided his person, a person on whose head a sum of thirty thousand
pounds was set.

Four of these men were in a cave, Coraghoth, in the Braes of
Glenmoriston, when Glenaladale brought Charles to see them. They had
expected to see young Clanranald, and as soon as they saw the Prince one
of their number recognised him, but had the presence of mind to address
him as an old acquaintance by the name of 'MacCullony.' When the four
knew who their guest really was, they bound themselves to be faithful to
him by the dreadful Highland oath, praying 'that their backs might be to
God, and their faces to the devil, and that all the curses the
Scriptures do pronounce might come upon them and their posterity if they
did not stand firm to the Prince in the greatest danger.'

For about three weeks Charles shared the life of these outlaws, sleeping
in caves and holes of the earth, living on the wild deer of their
shooting and the secret gifts of the peasantry. They did not understand
his English, but the Prince was beginning to pick up a little Gaelic. He
was able at least to improve their cooking and reprove their swearing,
two services they liked afterwards to recall. Here too, as elsewhere on
his wanderings, the Prince gained the hearts of all his followers by his
gracious gaiety and plucky endurance of hardships. In the beginning of
August his hopes had again turned to Poole Ewe, but learning for a
second time that no French ship could land on the closely guarded coast,
he and his friends determined to remain in the northern straths of
Inverness-shire till the Government troops should withdraw from the
Great Glen--the chain of lakes which now forms the Caledonian Canal--and
thus leave the way cle