Through that night, in between the slumber that was forced on him by sheer weight of tiredness, Rupert held fast the last words of the Prince. It was their strength--the Stuart’s strength and his, that, either way, they came into their kingdom. The Georgian troops, sleeping or waking till the dawn’s bugle notes rang out, had only one way of victory; they must conquer, or lose all, in this world’s battle; it was a sealed riddle to them that a man may find true gain in loss. The dawn came red and lonely over Culloden Moor, and the austere hills, as they cleared their eyes of mist-grey sleep, looked down on a fury in the making, on preparations for a battle whose tragedy is sobbing to this day. Rupert, his heart on fire as he went through that day’s eagerness--the Prince, who found recompense in action for the indignities of Derby--the Highlanders, who were fighting with the zest of children dancing round a village Maypole--could never afterwards reconstruct the sharp and shifting issues of the battle, could not guess how it came that all their gallantry, their simple hope, were broken by the stolid foreign soldiery. Even at the bridge, where they came on with shield and dirk and claymore against the Duke’s three lines of musketry--the first line kneeling, the second stooping, the third standing to full height--when they lay in tangled, writhing heaps, shot down at twenty paces, those of the Highlanders whose eyes were clear above disasters of the body were surprised that love of their Prince had not disarmed the musketry; and they tried to get up again, and died in the simple faith that had taught them how to fight and how to die. The Prince galloped up to the company of MacDonalds, who had stood sullenly aloof because, at the beginning of the fight, they had not been given the first post of danger. “MacDonalds!” he said. “Who comes with me to the bridge?” They forgot their sulkiness, forgot allegiance to their chieftain. There was the Stuart here, his face crimsoned by a glancing musket-shot, his voice alive and dominant. From frank disaster, from toothache and the miry roads, from this day’s battle, which had found him skilled in fight, he had learned his kingship. The MacDonald turned sharply round, putting himself between his clansmen and the Prince. “We stay,” he said, with peremptory and harsh command. “They would not give us the right wing of the battle--we’ll take no other.” The Prince saw them halt in the midst of their eager rush to serve him--saw them look at each other, waver, and stand still. A call stronger than his own had come to them--the call that is in each man’s blood, blowing willy-nilly like the wind and bidding him obey the teaching of dead forefathers. Their hearts were toward the Prince--they hungered for this onset at the bridge--but they held back, just as at Derby, because old allegiance was demanded by their chieftain. “MacDonalds!” cried the Prince again, with desperate eagerness. “Who’s for the bridge?”