services, and that you are perfectly free to decline this mission to the south if you would rather not undertake it. It is unquestionably a dangerous one.”
“I will undertake it readily, sir,” Ronald said, “and I thank you sincerely for bringing my name before the prince, and the prince himself for his kindness in granting me his commission, which so far I have done but little to win. I shall be able, I trust, to carry out this mission to his satisfaction; and although I am ignorant of the country I shall have the advantage of taking with me my brave follower, Malcolm Anderson, who for years was in the habit of going with droves of cattle down into Lancashire, and will not only know the country but have acquaintances there, and being known as a drover would pass without suspicion of his being engaged with politics.”
“That will do well,” Lord George said. “I will get the list of persons on whom you should call prepared tomorrow. You had best go to Sir Thomas Sheridan and Francis Strickland, who came over with you, and get them to present you to Secretary Murray and recommend you to him. If he hears that your mission is of my recommendation he will do all he can to set the prince against you. Everything that I do is wrong in his eyes, and I do believe that he would ruin the cause in order to injure me, did he see no other way to accomplish that end. Therefore, if he mentions my name, as he is like to do, knowing that you have been my aide de camp, be sure that you say nought in my favour, or it will ruin you with him. You will, of course, attend the prince's levee tomorrow, and had best make preparation to start at nightfall.”
The next day, accordingly, Ronald called upon Sir Thomas Sheridan and Strickland, and telling them that the prince had determined to send him on a mission into Lancashire, asked them to present him to Secretary Murray, from whom he would receive orders for his guidance and instruction as to the persons whom he was to visit. The two gentlemen proceeded with him to the house in which Secretary Murray had taken up his abode, and introduced him, with much warmth, as a fellow passenger on board the Doutelle.
“You have been serving since as Lord Murray's aide de camp?”
“Yes, sir, the prince recommended me to him at Perth, and I have since had the honour to carry his orders.”
“Captain Leslie, for so the prince has granted him a commission,” Sir Thomas said, “has served two years in the French army, and was present at Dettingen and Fontenoy. He mentioned to me on the voyage that he had the honour of being presented by Marshal Saxe to the King of France, and that he received his commission from the marshal, to whom he had acted as aide de camp at Fontenoy.”
“You have begun well, indeed, young sir,” Murray said, “to have received at your age, for I judge that you are not yet twenty, commissions in the French army and ours.”
Ronald bowed.
“He has another claim upon all you Scottish gentlemen,” Sir Thomas said, “for Colonel Macdonald told us, when he introduced him to us at Nantes, that it was through his interference and aid alone that he escaped safely from Glasgow, and that all his papers, with the names of the king's friends in Scotland, did not fall into George's hands. He was taken prisoner for his share in that affair, but escaped from the ship in the Thames, and succeeded in crossing to France. So you see, young as he is, he has rendered good service to the cause.”
The expression of the secretary's face, which had before been cold and distant, changed at once. He had been aware that Ronald had been chosen for this business on the recommendation of Lord George Murray, and his jealousy of that nobleman had at once set him against Ronald, of whose antecedents he was entirely ignorant; but what he now heard entirely altered the case, and disposed him most favourably towards him, especially as his own name would have been one of the most prominent in the list, he having been in constant communication with Colonel Macdonald during the stay of the latter in Scotland.
“I had no idea it was to you that we are all so indebted,” he said warmly. “I heard from Colonel Macdonald, after his return from France, that he owed his escape entirely to the quickness and bravery of a young gentleman of whose name he was ignorant, but who, he feared, would suffer for his interference on his behalf, and prayed me and all other loyal gentlemen of Scotland to befriend you should they ever discover your name, for that we assuredly owed it to you that we escaped imprisonment, if not worse. I am truly glad to meet you and thank you in person. And so you are going on this mission?”
“I have undertaken to do my best, sir. Fortunately I have a faithful follower who fought beside my father in '15, followed him to France and fought by his side in the Scottish Dragoons for fifteen years, and who has since been my best friend. He worked for years, when I was a child, as a drover of cattle from the Highlands into England. He knows Cumberland and Lancashire well, and would be known at every wayside inn. He will accompany me, and I shall pass as his nephew, therefore no suspicion will be likely to light upon me.”
“And you set out tonight?”
“Yes, sir, if my orders and letters are ready.”
“There will not be many letters,” the secretary said. “It would not do for you to have documents upon you which might betray you and our friends there should you be arrested. I will give you a list of the gentlemen on whom you have to call, which you had best learn by heart and destroy before you cross the frontier. You shall have one paper only, and that written so small that it can be carried in a quill. This you can show to one after the other. If you find you are in danger of arrest you can destroy or swallow it. I will give them to you at the prince's levee this afternoon, and will send to your tent a purse of gold for your expenses.”
“I shall need but little for that, sir,” Ronald said smiling.
“For your expenses, no,” the secretary said; “but one never can say what money may be required for. You may have to buy fresh horses, you may want it to bribe someone to conceal you. Money is always useful, my young friend. By the way, what family of Leslies do you belong to? I heard that one of your name had accompanied the prince, but no more.”
“My father was Leslie of Glenlyon.”
“Indeed!” the secretary exclaimed. “Of course, I know the name well. The lands were confiscated; but we shall soon set that right, and I will see that they are added to when the time comes to reward the king's friends and punish his foes.”
Ronald now took his leave and returned to Malcolm, who was making preparation for the enterprise. He had already purchased two suits of clothes, such as would be worn by Lowland drovers, and was in high spirits, being more elated than was Ronald himself at the latter's promotion. In the course of the day he bought two rough ponies, as being more suitable for the position they were to assume than the horses with which they had been furnished at Perth. Ronald attended the levee, and thanked the prince for the favour which he bestowed upon him.
“You are a young gentleman after my own heart,” Prince Charles said, “and I promised myself on shipboard that we should be great friends; but I have been so busy since I landed, and you have been so occupied in my service, that I have seen but little of you. On your return I hope that I shall be able to have you near my person. I am half jealous of you, for while you are younger than I am you have seen good service and taken part in great battles, but hitherto I have led a life almost of idleness.”
Ronald bowed deeply at the prince's gracious speech. On his return to his tent he found a messenger from the secretary with a purse which, on counting its contents, they found to amount to a hundred guineas.
They started immediately, and travelled twenty miles before stopping for the night at a small wayside inn.
“This seems like old times to me,” Malcolm said as, after eating supper, they sat by a turf fire, “except that on my way down I had the herd to look after. There is no fear of our being questioned or suspected till we reach the border, for there is not an English soldier between the Forth and the Tweed; nor is it likely that we shall meet with any difficulty whatever till we get to Carlisle. Cope's forces, or what remain of them, are at Newcastle, and it will be there that the English will gather, and the western road is likely to be open until, at any rate, Prince Charles moves south. George's troops have plenty to think about without interfering with the Lowlands drovers. At the same time, after we have once crossed the Tweed, we may as well leave the high road. I know every bypath over the fells.”
On the third day after starting they crossed the border and were among the hills of Cumberland. They found that among the villages great apprehension existed. The tales of the rapine and destruction wrought in the old times by the Scottish forays had been handed down from father to son, and nothing less than the destruction of their homes and the loss of their flocks and herds was looked for. Malcolm was welcomed warmly at the little village inn where they put up for the night.
“Why, it's well nigh three years since I saw you last,” the host said, “and before that it was seldom two
