NARRATIVE of a Conversation betwixt Captain JOHN HAY and me, ROBERT FORBES. [Sidenote: 7 Nov. 1747] _Leith, Saturday, November 7th, 1747._ [Sidenote: _fol._ 479.] I dined in the house of Mrs. Seaman at the foot of the Kirkgate, with John Hay, captain of the Custom-House yacht at Air, when the conversation turned much upon the dangers and distresses the Prince behoved to undergoe in his skulking and wandering from place to place after the battle of Culloden. Captain Hay asked if it was not one of the name of MacLeod that went to Stornoway in the Lewis upon the business of engaging a ship, with a design to take off the Prince and the few that were then with him? I told him it was Donald MacLeod, an old man of sixty-eight years of age, and who had been along with the Prince for nine or ten weeks after the battle of Culloden. 'That project,' said the Captain, 'happened to miscarry by being discovered, and I have reason to think that the discovery was owing to an information given by a Presbyterian minister.' Upon this I gave the Captain an account of this affair (to the best of my remembrance) as I [Sidenote: _fol._ 480.] had got it from the mouth of Donald MacLeod, viz., that a Presbyterian preacher in one of the Uists had writ a letter to a friend in the Harris, who then writ a letter to a Presbyterian preacher in the Lewis, upon which the people of the Lewis conveened at Stornoway to the number of some hundreds, etc.[213] [213] See f. 288. To this the Captain replied that he had good reason to assure me that that indeed was the matter of fact. 'For,' added he, 'as I was cruizing along with the rest at that time I had an opportunity of knowing how the different informations came about.' I told him I was exceedingly glad to have his account of the matter to support and confirm Donald Macleod's own representation of it, because that Donald had been reproached by severals for having got drunk;[214] and in his cups for having discovered to some one acquaintance or other the real design for which he had hired the ship, and this acquaintance was said to have blown the whole project. Captain Hay said he did not believe one word of all that, but that the true state [Sidenote: _fol._ 481.] of the case was above represented, and that the Prince would have been on board with his few attendants that very night when the discovery was made, had he not met with that unexpected disappointment. [214] See ff. 134, 184.