The vessel was bound for Leith. About three weeks after she had been
apprehended, as the ship cruized about, it approached the shore of
Armadale. Here Flora was permitted to land, in order to bid adieu to her
parents. She was sent ashore under a guard of two officers and a party
of soldiers, and was forbidden to say anything in Erse, or anything at
all except in presence of the officers. Here she stayed two hours, and
then returned to the ship. With what emotions she left the island of
Skye and found herself carried as a prisoner to Leith, it is not perhaps
in these tranquil days easy to conceive.
After her apprehension, her father-in-law, Armadale, to use the phrase
of some of the unfortunate Jacobites, "began a-skulking;" a report
having gone about that he had given a pass to his daughter, although
aware that she was travelling with "the Pretender" disguised in woman's
clothes. There was also another source of suspicion against him, which
was his having the Prince's pistols in his keeping. These were given him
by Macdonald of Milton, the brother of Flora; they had been received
either from Charles himself, or from O'Sullivan or O'Neil; but still
they furnished a proof of some communication between Charles Edward and
Armadale. Another sufferer was Donald Roy Macdonald. Among not the least
energetic of those who aided the escape of Charles Edward from the Long
Island, was Donald Roy Macdonald. A model of the true Highland gentleman
in deportment, handsome in person, his conduct fully bore out his
character. To this warm-hearted disinterested young man the Prince
quickly attached himself. Crippled as he was, he was obliged also to
"go a-skulking." He concealed himself in three different caves, where by
turns he made his abode for eight weeks, wrapping himself up in his
plaid, and making his bed of the heather; his subsistence he owed to the
care of Lady Margaret Macdonald, who brought him food, though at the
risk of her own safety. It is consolatory to find heroic friendship, or
compassionate interest, enlivening the melancholy annals of civil
contentions, of revenge and treachery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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