CHAPTER II

THE "BONNIE PRINCE'S" BRIDE


In the pageant of our history there are few more 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