ore attractive figures than
that of "Bonnie Prince Charlie," the "yellow-haired laddie" whose blue
eyes made a slave of every woman who came under their magic, and whose
genial, unaffected manners turned the veriest coward into a hero, ready
to follow him to the death in that year of ill-fated romance, "the
forty-five."

The very name of the "Bonnie Prince," the hope of the fallen Stuarts,
the idol of Scotland--leading a forlorn hope with laughter on his lips,
now riding proudly at the head of his rabble army, now a fugitive
Ishmael among the hills and caves of the Highlands, but ever the last to
lose heart--has a magic still to quicken the pulses. That later years
proved the idol's feet to be of clay, that he fell from his pedestal to
end his days an object of contempt and derision, only served to those
who knew him in the pride of his youth to mingle pity with the glamour
of romance that still surrounds his name.

In the year 1772, when this story opens, Charles Edward, Count of
Albany, had already travelled far on the downward road that led from
the glory of Prestonpans to his drunkard's grave. A pitiful pensioner of
France, who had known the ignominy of wearing fetters in a French
prison, a social outcast whose Royal pretensions were at best the
subject of an amused tolerance, the "laddie of the yellow hair" had
fallen so low that the brandy bottle, which was his constant companion
night and day, was his only solace.

Picture him at this period, and mark the pathetic change which less than
thirty years had wrought in the Stuart "darling" of "the forty-five,"
when many a proud lady of Scotland would have given her life for a smile
from his bonnie face. A middle-aged man with dropsy in his limbs, and
with the bloated face of the drunkard; "dull, thick, silent-looking
lips, of purplish red scarce redder than the skin; pale blue eyes
tending to a watery greyness, leaden, vague, sad, but with angry
streakings of red; something inexpressibly sad, gloomy, helpless,
vacant, and debased in the whole face."

Such was this "Young Chevalier" when France took it into her head to
make a pawn of him in the political chess-game with England. As a man he
was beneath contempt; as a "King"--well, he was a _Roi pour rire_; but
at least the Royal House he represented might be made a useful weapon
against the arrogant Hanoverian who sat on his father's throne. That
rival stock must not be allowed to die out; his claims might weigh
h