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“Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,

In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts:

Let him that is a true-born gentleman

And stands upon the honour of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.”

Shakespeare.

George of Hanover sat upon the throne of Great Britain, whilst Louis XV. comfortably occupied the throne of France. The English were poor and phlegmatic, the Scots poor and discontented, the French poor and outwardly resigned. In Italy and elsewhere the Pope ruled. In Rome the thoughts and hopes of the Chevalier de St. George were turned towards Paris, whither his Carluccio had gone. In Paris the gaze of the young Chevalier was strained towards Scotland, whither he hoped to go. “Lord, open the eyes of the young man!” might fittingly have been uttered over him, for he ever remained blind to what he did not wish to see. In his case there was no mountain full of horses and chariots of fire, no help from heaven, scant aid on earth. A dwindling cause, a dying ideal handed down through generations, abortive risings, furtive plots: on these he built his house of cards, and saw it a palace fair.

Round the corner and into the story comes Mr. Murray of Broughton. A small, bleak man, modishly attired, just returned from Paris to his native Scotland, halting, hesitating, grimacing at the nip of Edinburgh’s east winds, shrugging his shoulders under his fine cloak. It is only charitable to assume that the pallor of his complexion was due to a gusty crossing and a chilly ride from Leith. Gathering cloak and courage, he plunged down the uneven steps of a jeweller’s shop in the Luckenbooths.

The shop was dark and low, so that Mr. Murray might surely be pardoned for falling over the foot of a gentleman from Skye, seated in the darkest corner. The reader may pardon, but the Skye gentleman did not. With a terrible oath in Gaelic, he rose up and damned Mr. Murray’s inexcusable clumsiness. Mr. Murray clapped hand to sword, the Skye gentleman drew his dirk, the goldsmith tore his hair, and the goldsmith’s wife swooned. Faces peered in at the shop door, and onlookers shouted for the City Guard. The chimes of St. Giles’ overhead rang out reprovingly.

“Deil tak’ you, sir!” bawled the Skye gentleman. He possessed a local habitation and a name, both being MacLeod. “It is unpardonable that I cannot enter an honest merchant’s booth in quest of a snuff-box, but you must bring your pestilential weight down upon my unoffending foot!”

Mr. Murray’s hat swept the floor in the abasement of his bow. “Sir, one misfortune may lead to an advantage. I, who have the honour of addressing”—he coughed, and the Skye gentleman bowed—“er—you, possess, my friends tell me, a very pretty taste in snuff-boxes. If you will be so vastly good as to overlook my clumsiness, I shall be happy to tender my humble opinion.”

“Plain lids,” declared the Skye gentleman. His air was truculent.

“Sir—pardon me—chased. In Paris, from whence I have but lately returned, the chased lid is all the mode.” He rapped on the counter. “Your wares, man, and cease to gape!”

“From Paris? Ah!” remarked Mr. MacLeod of MacLeod. His look was thoughtful.

“From Paris, sir,” corroborated Mr. Murray of Broughton.

They bent bewigged heads over a glittering array of snuff-boxes.

The goldsmith wiped his brow. The goldsmith’s wife collected her skirts and her dignity. The Peeping Toms, mightily disappointed, sheered away. St. Giles’ had chimed again before the weighty question of plain versus chased lids had been thoroughly threshed out. It was by no means settled. Each gentleman still adhered firmly to his own opinion. They must have a second, nay, a third. Was there not a soul in Edinburgh, known to either, qualified to give the casting vote?

The chased lids were the more costly. Naturally the goldsmith sided with Mr. Murray. The Skye gentleman puckered his nose, and raked his wig with a thoughtful forefinger. The said forefinger presently joined the rest of its owner’s hand in striking a forgetful brow. A plague upon his prodigious stupidity! Here was he, wasting his own time and that of his honoured new acquaintance, (more bows exchanged, followed by pinches of snuff presented from mulls long in their owners’ possession, and deprecating flicks of fine handkerchiefs,) when all the while—“All the while, not a pennystone cast from us, is my dearest friend, an Appin gentleman, whose taste in snuff-boxes is, sir, positively the last word on the subject.”

Mr. Murray cried out with raised hands of admiration. Where was this paragon to be found? At Peggy Ferrier’s tavern? Prodigious fortunate! They must visit and consult him without delay. They tumbled back the goldsmith’s wares, vowed a speedy return armed with an unimpeachable decision, swept their hats off again to the goldsmith’s bonny wife, and so forth. The doorway was low and narrow. The Skye gentleman became vastly humorous about his foot. He hoped that his new friend saw it in the daylight, and would not offend again. Mr. Murray dealt a sly nip to the arm beneath the peat-smelling coat. “ ’Twas the other I trod upon,” he murmured softly.

Outside, Edinburgh was grey and comely. In the November dusk the long, climbing lines of houses framing the Lawnmarket were etched darkly against a dun sky. The air blew full of snow. Everything showed uniformly drab and colourless, the black bulk of St. Giles’, the oblong of the Parliament Close, the towering lands beyond the Parliament House. Both men walked fast, muffled in their cloaks, their voices lowered only to catch the ear of the other.

“You bring letters?” MacLeod peered across at Murray.

“One letter.” The three syllables were stressed.

The islander quickened his step. “From the Prince?”

“Hush! Yes.” The speaker darted an apprehensive glance about him.

The pair turned down a wynd diving steeply between tall houses. These showed blank faces to the passer-by, offering a careless invitation only by gaping mouths leading to twisting turnpike stairs. The strip of walk was filthy, the strip of sky overhead a long, dun ribbon. Murray and his companion paused before a tavern built upon the steepest part of the close. It seemed to lurch downward, as if leaning against its neighbour. Its few lighted windows had a squint, peering appearance, like the sly gaze of a gled-eyed human being.

A woman opened to Murray’s furtive knock. Mrs. Peggy Ferrier (let us give her brevet rank, for she possessed no legal claim to the appellation, poor soul) is not the heroine of this chronicle, so no space need be wasted in cataloguing her charms. Suffice it that she was as unattractive as her hostelry, and her method of securing custom a mystery. Custom she had in plenty, as the loud oaths and roaring choruses coming from various apartments with jealously-shut doors bore witness. The candle held in her hand threw wavering light upon peeling walls and dust-powdered floor, her rat’s face and beady, shifting eyes. She nodded slowly, and led the way up stairs which creaked protest and warning. Perhaps the inanimate things, the house that had witnessed crime and treachery and bloodshed in its length of days, knew that these two were going to the discussion of a deed whose ending might be the ladder from which there is no descent. Fear not, he who reads. The necks of both were safe enough. MacLeod had craft and cunning sufficient not to risk his all in a desperate adventure. John Murray embarked upon it, lost everything including honour, and lives in Scotland’s annals as a traitor meaner than Judas Iscariot. Judas at least gave back the blood-money, and went and hanged himself. Murray of Broughton kept the price of dishonour, and lived till his appointed hour.

In the room to which they were leisurely ascending five gentlemen awaited them, all presumably experts in the nice question of snuff-boxes. That long back and long face, topped by a shock of ill-powdered red hair, were the happy possessions of Stewart of Appin, to secure whose unimpeachable opinion Messrs. Murray and MacLeod were so anxiously hastening. He was standing by the window in the fading twilight, talking to the Earl of Traquair, Mr. Murray’s near neighbour at Broughton. The Earl’s conversation proclaimed him an ardent Jacobite, but in action, even as a simple messenger, he proved more cunning than capable. The youngest and the oldest of the gathering leaned together, one a slim, restless-eyed boy, the other a mountain of an aged man. His gross body, harassed by the evils of sciatica, dropsy, and strenuous living, was sunk in a vast chair in an attitude which yet lent him length and dignity. His heavy-jowled face was seamed by a thousand wrinkles of craft, laughter, and crime. At the fire, whose light beat upon a countenance singularly noble and thoughtful, stood the one honest man, who saved his soul alive by losing his great possessions. Has the reader been adequately introduced? If not, behold Mr. Stewart of Appin, Charles, fifth Earl of Traquair, young MacDonald of Glengarry, my Lord Lovat, and Cameron of Lochiel, while here come Mr. Murray of Broughton and Mr. MacLeod of MacLeod to complete the pleasant party.

The room was high and windy, lifted far above the bustle of the city. Its two rattling windows had screening shutters, which banged in the gale, and closed out a bird’s-eye view over the slant of roofs, and the dark threads of precipitous wynds far below. Candles broke its dusk with their yellow glimmer, touching the heavy cloaks and brooding faces of the gathering. At the sight of the new-comers, old Lord Lovat heaved his bulk out of his chair, and the rest turned doorwards.

“Snuff-boxes!” giggled young Glengarry. “Oh, Egad, snuff-boxes!”

They came further into the room, and hands met other hands. There was an air of secrecy, of furtive, tentative preparedness in the atmosphere. Each man nudged his neighbour, and waited for him to speak. They drew their chairs about a worm-eaten table, and voices dropped as if the soiled, listening walls might overhear. A tavern catch was being roared out through the lighted windows of a house across the way.

“This is the mode of snuff-box fashionable over the water,” said Mr. Murray.

He produced a small diamond mull, and pressed back the lid. The box was empty of its destined commodity, but the deft sliding aside of a false bottom revealed a portrait set in diamonds. The face of Prince Charles Edward Stuart smiled up at the eager gazers. They studied its delicate oval, the somewhat full mouth, the weak chin, the eyes, brown, prominent, bold of glance, hard of inquiry, the haughty carriage of the young head, slightly turned as if to meet the spectator, the bright, gold-tipped hair hanging down beneath the formal curve of the peruke. It was a startling thing, that young, vivid face, brilliant as the stones surrounding it, shining out of the dusk of this squalid room and the strange company. They passed it from hand to hand in silence.

“Is he as bonny as the artist’s fancy paints him?” The sneer was Traquair’s.

“Bonny! A thousand times bonnier than that piece of coloured ivory!” Murray struck the table. “Those eyes, the finest I ever saw, and the whole body built for war. I tell you, sirs, that that is a face which men will follow to the world’s end, and the Highlanders into Hell itself!”

They took fire from his enthusiasm, his stark sincerity. Fate caught this man, of all men writhing in the desperate, tangled coil of the ’45, the least fitted to choose between death and dishonour, but spared him the greatest shame of any—the opportunity to sell his king’s son. Murray loved Charles Edward from the moment of their first meeting. He never wavered in his devotion to his Prince, though he served him ill, and betrayed lesser lives to save his own.

“You have word from His Royal Highness?” MacLeod asked.

Murray gave him a letter, and reclaimed his snuff-box. He was seeing, not the painted face, but the glowing original, as he and the Prince paced up and down behind the stables of the Tuileries in Paris. He saw the soft hair blown back from the eager brow, marked the restless, foreign gestures of the long hands, hearkened to a torrent of excited talk, as Charles outlined his plans and hopes. He was sick of dodging and skulking and evading notice, stifled by this half-life of furtive hiding and secret interviews, weary of his humiliating position, mean lodgings, interminable waiting for the promised aid of France. Plot after plot had miscarried or delayed since his headlong flight from Rome, buoyed up by such high hopes. He was resolved to strike a blow for his own hand, to win or lose all. He would come over in person, and throw himself on the loyalty of the Scots people. “If I bring with me but a single footman, I shall visit Scotland next summer,” he declared.

His eagerness, his reckless enthusiasm, his youthful certainty carried Murray, ordinarily cautious and a coward, off his feet. He had said little to discourage Charles, and was here to-night to aid him. He had opened the royal eyes as to the worthlessness and double-dealing of his agents in France, but looking at the surrounding faces now, his heart failed. Lovat, whom he was to herd to Tower Hill, young Glengarry, a future spy, Traquair the skulker, MacLeod the turncoat, Appin the coward, Lochiel, the one righteous man. Charles Edward was building on a quicksand if he relied on the support of such as these.

MacLeod kissed the letter, tears in his narrow eyes. “There’s a Prince that I would aid to my last penny, my last man!” he cried.

“You would join him if he came?”

“Aye, would I not?”

“Even if he came alone?”

“Even then!”

“Well, write your promise to the Prince.” Murray thrust across paper, a standish, and a dingy quill.

MacLeod drew back. “The spoken word of a Skye chief should be sufficient, sir.”

They argued together, their voices lowered by caution, but rapidly rising in anger and annoyance. Murray was met by a craft which matched his own, an obstinacy as hard to shake as this rattling old house whose walls sheltered both. MacLeod would promise anything, but would write nothing. He should make it his business to advance the Prince’s interest, as much as was in his power, would join him, “let him come when he would,” but the written word was dangerous.

Murray turned in despair to Traquair and Appin. They were less reckless, more cautious, equally recalcitrant. Each had probing questions to put as to the force the Prince proposed to bring with him, the assistance in men and money that might be counted upon from France. They cried out together that it was a mad enterprise, unless strongly backed by the French king. All the time the old man and the young were silent: Glengarry because he had little but his sword to lend, Lovat because he had great possessions.

“And you, my lord?” Murray turned to him, pale and quiet.

Simon Fraser, a lifetime of adventure, hazard, and wickedness behind him, murmured that he was over-old for plots. He lapsed into the vernacular in his earnestness. “Look at me, sir, a mass of aches and pains and gouty flesh. Can a man o’ eighty lead oot his clan to dance to the tune of that Popish spark’s piping?” He cocked his great head slily to one side. “What are we tae get oot o’t, Mr. Murray, tell us that?”

“The honour and happiness of seeing your rightful king in St. James’s, my lord.” The retort was stern.

Lovat lolled in his chair. “Faith, sir, I think he’s warmer at Rome.”

Murray snatched out his snuff-box, and thrust the pictured Charles upon the other’s rheumy-eyed attention. “I spoke not of the King, my Lord Lovat. I implore you to look upon his son’s face, and tell me if you will leave young blood like his to cool in a Paris back-street? He would take scant account of a Highland winter and these Edinburgh haars!”

The old man sat drowned in thought. Out in the ’15 on the Government side, before and after a lukewarm Jacobite, he possessed a powerful clan, far-reaching influence, an unassailable position, but he no longer boasted the clear wits and ready craft that had served him in past emergencies and tight corners. He wanted one thing, however, and if he obtained it, George of Hanover or James Stuart might sit upon the throne of England for all he cared.

“Harkee, sir.” He laid his swollen hand upon Murray’s arm. “The King promised me a dukedom. Let His Majesty make me Duke of Beaufort, let the Prince bring over my patent with him, and were my friend Duncan Forbes of Culloden, the Lord President, fifty times my friend, I’d follow the White Rose!”

Murray smiled at the old man’s vanity. “You will lead out your clan, my lord, for a wreath of strawberry leaves?”

“Aye, sir, or, as the Scripture has it, I will send my beloved son.” He turned suddenly to young Glengarry. “He is presently at St. Andrews University, and should be of your age, child.”

Alastair Ruadh MacDonald laughed. “My younger brother, sir, but nineteen, is wedded, and the father of two bairns. I will quote Scripture against my Lord Lovat’s, and say that he has married a wife and therefore cannot come, but I”—he rose with kindling eyes—“will serve in his stead, and our MacDonalds will follow the Prince to a man!”

“And what says Lochiel?” Murray turned to the one who hitherto had not spoken.

The grandson of Ewan Cameron, the son of an exiled and attainted Jacobite, smiled in the dusk. “You should not need to ask a Cameron that, sir, only I would have the Prince use caution. He is young and eager and ambitious, but we older heads know France. Go you back to him, Mr. Murray, bid him come with French aid, and Scotland will do the rest.”

“Plague take the wind! This room is like a vault!” The complaint was Traquair’s.

He went across and heaved a mass of wood a-top of the miserable fire. The flames shot up, showing faces secretive, watchful, calm, cunning, and afraid. The snuff-box lay open on the table. The diamonds winked as if in mockery of the mean room and meaner-hearted conspirators.

MacLeod called for wine, sending his voice ringing down the dark well of the impenetrable stair. A slovenly girl brought bottle and glasses, enduring with shut eyes when Lord Lovat squeezed and kissed her. They drank to the King across the water, and to the Prince who was his elder son. It is doubtful whether King James, then on his knees in the chapel of his palace at Rome, praying for his “dearest Carluccio,” or Charles Edward, yawning over a game of cards with his Irish intimates, Sir Thomas Sheridan and Parson Kelly, was a penny the better or the worse for the toast.