of hiring a chaise to go to Caxton (a place in the high road) to see the Pretender and Highlanders as they passed."

It never was more than a raid. They were no more effective than a squirrel in a cage. Not one person of distinction declared for them. The chiefs became uneasy and depressed. The decisive stroke lay with the Government, who could land troops where they liked and when they liked. It was only a question of time. The army in Flanders had been recalled. The only cheerful episode was a d'Artagnan-like exploit by a sergeant of Johnstone's company named Dickson, who must have had something of the Gascon in him. The incident cannot be better told than in Johnstone's own words.

"He had quitted Preston in the evening, with his mistress and my drummer; and having marched all night he arrived next morning at Manchester, which is about twenty miles distant from Preston, and immediately began to beat up for recruits for the yellowhaired laddie.' The populace at first did not interrupt him, conceiving our army to be near the town; but as soon as they knew that it would not arrive till the evening, they surrounded him in a tumultuous manner, with the intention of taking him prisoner alive or dead. Dickson presented his blunderbuss, which was charged with slugs, threatening to blow out the brains of those who first dared to lay hands on

himself or the two who accompanied him; and by turning round continually, facing in all directions, and behaving like a lion, he soon enlarged the circle which a crowd of people had formed round them. Having continued for some time to manœuvre in this way, those of the inhabitants of Manchester who were attached to the house of Stuart took arms, and flew to the assistance of Dickson to rescue him from the fury of the mob, so that he soon had five or six hundred men to aid him, who dispersed the crowd in a very short time. Dickson now triumphed in his turn; and putting himself at the head of his followers, he proudly paraded undisturbed the whole day, with his drummer, enlisting for my company all who offered themselves.'

Thus was Manchester taken by a sergeant, a drummer, and a girl. Dickson got one hundred and eighty recruits, and his expenses did not exceed three guineas.

On the retreat from Derby, which was conducted with consummate skill by Lord George Murray, Johnstone suffered more than most, but only from the inclemency of the weather. Owing to the incompetence of the English commanders, they were never in any danger of being cut off. His ammunition waggons broke down on Shap, and for the whole night he was exposed to a dreadful storm of wind and rain. From the badness of the roads this was a frequent occurrence. They recrossed the border on the

Prince's birthday, the 20th December.

The homing instinct of the clans asserted itself soon after the battle of Falkirk, at which Johnstone was present but not actively engaged, and Charles fell back on Inverness. "To our eternal shame," says Johnstone, we fled with precipitation from the same army which we had completely beaten sixteen days before," which shows that he did not realise the situation. The time had gone by when they could profit by a victory. At Inverness provisions were scarce, the Prince had little or no money left, and his officers were in like case. Distress and discord ruled. The Prince hated Lord George Murray, and was completely dominated by the Irish adventurers who had landed with him, and who made no secret of their desire to quit, a desire which, we suspect, he shared. It could hardly be otherwise. So far as the object he had in view was concerned, the end came when the clans turned back at Derby.

Johnstone's account of Culloden reflects all this. The battle was fought on the 16th of April 1746. On the 13th the Prince took up his position, the Highlanders sleeping on the bare ground, without shelter and with only biscuit and water for food. The nights were very cold. Johnstone was fortunate: he slept on straw. On the evening of the 15th, about eight o'clock, they set out to surprise the Duke of Cumberland in his camp at Nairn by

a night attack. The 15th was the Duke's birthday, and the Prince believed that the English would be drunk and off their guard. The psychology may have been sound, but, as Johnstone says, "this march across the country, in a dark night, which did not allow us to follow any track, had the inevitable fate of all night marches." It was found impossible to preserve anything like order. They were in no condition to attack when they got there, and came back, arriving at Culloden about seven in the morning in a sorry state. There is a limit even to the endurance of a Highlander.

It was now their turn to be surprised. Johnstone graphically describes what happened to himself. "Exhausted with hunger, and worn out with the excessive fatigue of the three last nights, as soon as we reached Culloden I turned off as fast as I could to Inverness, where, eager to recruit my strength by a little sleep, I tore off my clothes, half asleep all the while; but when I had already one leg in the bed, and was on the point of stretching myself between the sheets, what was my surprise to hear the drum beat to arms, and the trumpets of the piquet of Fitzjames sounding the call to boot and saddle, which struck me like a clap of thunder. I hurried on my clothes, my eyes half shut, and, mounting a horse, I instantly repaired to our army, on the eminence on which we had remained for three days, and from which

we saw the English army at the distance of about two miles from us.' He was with the left wing in the battle, not twenty paces from the enemy, when the right gave way, and the flight spread to the left "with the rapidity of lightning." His friend Scothouse was killed by his side. The ground was marsh up to the middle of the leg, and he could scarcely walk. His horse and man, left on the eminence where the Prince remained during the battle, were not to be seen. Prince and servants alike had vanished. The enemy were advancing slowly, and had redoubled their fire. He was getting desperate when he perceived a horse, as he thought, without a rider. On getting to it he found to his astonishment that the bridle was in the hands of a man lying on the ground paralysed with fear. Without compunction he took possession of the horse and rode off.

The clans rallied at Ruthven, and Johnstone joined them there on the 18th, where he found Lord George Murray, the Duke of Perth, and other chief officers. Only the Prince was missing. He had gone, as he came, with his five Irishmen. The Highlanders were in good heart. They felt that they had been defeated by exposure, fatigue, and want of food. Lord George sent an aide-de-camp to inform the Prince that his army was in being, and they eagerly awaited his arrival. Two days later the aide-de-camp returned with

man seek his safety in the best way he can."

Abandoned by the Prince they separated, each intent on escaping the scaffold. Johnstone's brother-in-law Rollo was at Banff, inspector of merchant ships under the Government, and he made for there, hoping that he would be afforded an opportunity of embarking for abroad, disguised as a sailor. On the way he exchanged his laced Highland dress for a ragged and dirty rig-out. Rollo, though becomingly sympathetic, was true to his salt, and Johnstone was in a dilemma. Orders had been issued to all towns and villages between Inverness and Edinburgh to stop any person without a passport, and the ports had been closed, any one conniving at the escape of a fugitive being liable to the same punishment as those who had taken up arms. Nevertheless, he decided to head south and, if possible, reach Edinburgh. The Tay and the Forth were the chief obstacles. The shores of both firths were patrolled by cavalry, and the populace was anti-Jacobite almost to a man.

He got some assistance from gentlemen not hostile to the Stuarts though lacking in zeal, but mostly he had to rely on his own mother wit. At Cortachy, the native place of Lord Ogilvy, who had been with the Prince, he entered a publichouse in the village, and informed the landlady what he was. fault.

His intuition was not at

She told him of two

others who lay hidden in Glen Prossen, and he sought them out. Several of their comrades had been taken in the attempt to cross the Tay, and they urged him to stay with them. He remained seventeen days. They lived in the house of a man Samuel, and ate with him and his family. They had oatmeal bread and water for breakfast, for dinner oatmeal boiled with water, and at supper oatmeal on which they poured boiling water. Frequently detachments of cavalry put in an appearance, and at times they had to take to the hills. Finally they had to go, being no longer safe. His two companions would not face the Tay, and went north. Samuel guided Johnstone to the ferry. They set out at night, riding pillion, and turned the horse loose at daybreak.

By the good offices of Mr Graham of Duntroon, he was enabled to cross the Firth of Tay, but it was a near thing. Mr Graham hid him in a clump of broom, and engaged a boat and boatmen for nine o'clock in the evening. As Johnstone approached the ferry the dragoons were leaving it, and he all but walked into them. They had searched the village, and neither by money nor fair words could he induce the boatmen to row him over as arranged. Failing to make anything of them, he turned his attention to the two handsome daughters of the landlady of the inn, who had whispered in his ear that he had nothing to fear in her house, in the hope

that they would shame the men into compliance. That also was of no avail, and the exasperated girls declared they would go themselves, which they did, though it was a row of two miles there and two miles back. Johnstone had learned to row in Russia; he took one oar, and the girls by turns the other. They reached the other side about midnight.

A distant cousin at St Andrews was not too pleased to see him, but she gave him a letter to a tenant farmer of her own, stating that he was carrying papers to Edinburgh urgently required in a lawsuit before the courts. The farmer was to furnish a horse, and conduct him to Wemyss on the coast. "I delivered the letter," says Johnstone, "and the answer I received from this brute petrified me. Mrs Spens,' said he, may take her farm from me, and give it to whom she pleases, but she cannot make me profane the Lord's day by giving my horse to one who means to travel upon the Sabbath.'”

6

Here he rails at