Macconochie rode for her once, and found the highlanders before

Carlisle, and the Master riding by the Prince's side in high

favour; he took the letter (so Macconochie tells), opened it,

glanced it through with a mouth like a man whistling, and stuck it

in his belt, whence, on his horse passageing, it fell unregarded to

the ground. It was Macconochie who picked it up; and he still kept

it, and indeed I have seen it in his hands. News came to

Durrisdeer of course, by the common report, as it goes travelling

through a country, a thing always wonderful to me. By that means

the family learned more of the Master's favour with the Prince, and

the ground it was said to stand on: for by a strange condescension

in a man so proud - only that he was a man still more ambitious -

he was said to have crept into notability by truckling to the

Irish. Sir Thomas Sullivan, Colonel Burke and the rest, were his

daily comrades, by which course he withdrew himself from his own

country-folk. All the small intrigues he had a hand in fomenting;

thwarted my Lord George upon a thousand points; was always for the

advice that seemed palatable to the Prince, no matter if it was

good or bad; and seems upon the whole (like the gambler he was all

through life) to have had less regard to the chances of the

campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire to, if, by

any luck, it should succeed. For the rest, he did very well in the

field; no one questioned that; for he was no coward.

The next was the news of Culloden, which was brought to Durrisdeer

by one of the tenants' sons - the only survivor, he declared, of

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