"My story commences at the close of the fatal,—ay, sirs, I may say the most deplorable battle of Culloden; a battle which laid prostrate, for ever the hopes of a gallant prince, the cause of an illustrious house, and the energies of a brave and loyal people, and proved that _right_ may contend in vain against _might_, and that justice must sometimes yield to the overwhelming majority of brute force. I was then but a wild Highland boy of fifteen, and followed the clan-regiment of the noble Lochiel, upon whom I attended as a sort of page, to carry his target and scabbard on the march. My brave old father, too, was in the battle; and being, in consequence of his relationship to the chief, a front rank man, he greatly distinguished himself in that desperate but unavailing charge we made on the troops of the Elector, after foolishly enduring a cannonade which miserably thinned our numbers. Ah, sirs! had we at first rushed on them with the broad-sword, as was ever our wont, another race would have filled the throne at this hour; but when we did charge, Cumberland’s two lines were swept before our long blades like winnowed chaff upon the gale. Even then the day seemed ours, when the fire of the third compelled us to recoil. Ochone! let me think of it no more, for I grow wild at times when the memory of these days swells up in my withered heart, and the dangers, the glory, and the chivalry of the ’forty-five’ are all remembered with mingled pride and sorrow. I was but a child then, and yet on that bloody day I shot dead several of Barrel’s regiment, while the Camerons were among them, hewing them down like willow-wands with axe and claymore. "In the rout which followed, I fled away with our wounded chieftain, and gained a place of safety among the hills; but my father was taken captive by the Campbells from the west country, and so he was one of the few who escaped the death decreed to all by the bloody mandates of the German duke, whose memory will be abhorred and execrated while grass grows and water runs in the land of the Gael. "It is of my father’s adventures I have now principally to speak. "He was disarmed and manacled by the false sons of Diarmed, and from amidst them he beheld the merciless red-coats slaying, murdering in cold blood the helpless and unresisting wounded by spontoon and bayonet, by the sword and volleys of musquetry; while the relentless Cumberland rode about the muir of Drummossie with his staff, treading down the hearts of better and braver men than ever will come of his tribe. "The sun set that night on a field of blood, and one of woe and desolation to the Highlanders.