ggie, with a brave smile,
handed him a bap.

"Eat," she said in Scotch; "you are probably very hungry."

These simple words, spoken straight from her heart, had the effect, so
chroniclers inform us, of pulling him together a bit.

"Where can I hide?" he asked.

Maggie looked at him fearlessly for a moment.

"You shall hide in a tree," she cried, with sudden inspiration.

Bonnie Prince Charlie fell on his braw red knees.

"Please," he cried pleadingly, "could it be an elm? I'm so tired of
gnarled oaks."

"Yes!" cried the courageous girl exultantly. "Quick, we will trick them
yet."

Then came the supreme moment--the act of sheer devotion that was to
brand that simple soul through the ages as a noble martyr in, alas! a
lost cause. Shading her eyes with her hand, she perceived a legion of
the enemy encamped on the one island of which the lonely Gallic loch
boasted. Her woman's wit had devised a plan. Flinging baps and haggis to
the winds, she leapt into a boat and began to row--you all know the
story of that fateful row. Round and round the island she went for three
weeks,[23] never heeding her tired arms and weary hands; blisters came
and went, but she felt them not; her hat flew off, but the lion-hearted
woman never stopped;[24] and all to convince the troops on the island
that it was a fleet approaching under the command of Bonnie Prince
Charlie. Completely routed, every officer and man swam to the mainland
and beat a retreat, and not until the last of them had gone did Maggie
relinquish her hold on the creaking oars.

Thus did the strategy of a simple Highland lassie defeat the aims of
generals whose hearts and souls had been steeped from birth in the
sanguinary ways of war. Of her journey home with the Prince you all
know; and what her white-haired father said when she arrived you've
heard hundreds of times. There has been a lot of argument as to the
exact form the Prince's gratitude took. Some say he unwrapped her
plaidie and went away with it; others write that he cut a lock of his
braw red hair and gave it to her with his usual merry smile; but the
authentic version of that moving scene is that of the burnt scone.
Maggie had baked a scone and handed it to him; then, after he had bitten
it, he handed it back.

"Nay, lassie, nay," he is said to have remarked. "My purse is empty but
my heart is full. Take this scone imprinted by my royal teeth, and
treasure it."

Then with a debonair bow and a ready lau