I could not fail remarking to Captain Hay that Lady Clanranald's acquitting herself so exactly and wisely in the Prince's preservation was something very singular, and the more extraordinary that (as I had been informed) she happens frequently not to be so well in her health, and therefore (one would be apt to imagine) quite unfit to manage a point of so much delicacy and danger. The Captain answered that Lady Clanranald's conduct in that affair, all things considered, was very extraordinary indeed. After giving several very remarkable instances of the miseries and dangers the Prince had been exposed to in his wanderings, I begged leave to ask at Captain Hay what notions he [Sidenote: _fol._ 487.] would entertain of those folks in and about Edinburgh (people of no mean sense and discretion in the common affairs of life) who when certain accounts had come of the Prince's arrival in France were pleased to say: 'O these Jacobites are strange bodies, who attribute the preservation of their Prince to the providence of God alone, when Providence could have no hand in it at all, seeing the Duke of Cumberland and his army were not willing to take him, but, on the contrary, avoided the laying hands on him when they might have done it.' At this Captain Hay held up his hands and declared his amazement that any such expression could ever proceed out of the mouth of any person whatsomever, and asked seriously if there were any persons that could have the impudence to talk so? I assured him there were such persons as had actually used the above expressions, or words to the same purpose, and that they could [Sidenote: _fol._ 488.] be named. He said he was indeed surprised to hear the thing, considering the strict searches that had been made for the person of the Prince, and the many narrow escapes he had made. And, moreover, that it was well known in the army that when any officers happened to bring prisoners into the camp in the north, and after the report being made at the headquarters, the Duke of Cumberland used to be in a very bad humour, and to express himself in these words: 'These officers don't know their duty.' The whole conversation went easily on, and lasted till between four and five o'clock at night.