I remembered that in my uncle's log-book the greater part of the narrative of his adventures in France had to do with politics and the intrigues of the Jacobite party. He was not, himself, apparently, “out,” as we call it, in the affair of the 'Forty-five, because he did not believe the occasion suitable, and thought the Prince precipitous, but before and after that untoward event for poor Scotland, he had been active with such men as Clancarty, Lord Clare, the Murrays, the Mareschal, and such-like, which was not to be wondered at, perhaps, for our family had consistently been Jacobite, a fact that helped to its latter undoing, though my father as nominal head of the house had taken no interest in politics; and my own sympathies had ever been with the Chevalier, whom I as a boy had seen ride through the city of Glasgow, wishing myself old enough to be his follower in such a glittering escapade as he was then embarked on. But though I thought all this in a flash as it were, I betrayed nothing to Captain Thurot, who seemed somewhat dashed at my silence. There must have been something in my face, however, to show that I fully realised what he was feeling at, and was not too complacent, for Clancarty laughed. “Sure, 'tis a good boy, Thurot,” said he, “and loves his King George properly, like a true patriot.” “I won't believe it of a Greig,” said Captain Thurot. “A pestilent, dull thing, loyalty in England; the other thing came much more readily, I remember, to the genius of Andrew Greig. Come! Monsieur Paul, to be quite frank about it, have you no instincts of friendliness to the exiled house? M. Tête-de-fer has a great need at this particular moment for English friends. Once he could count on your uncle to the last ditch; can he count on the nephew?” “M. Tête-de-fer?” I repeated, somewhat bewildered. “M. Tête-de-mouche, rather,” cried my lord, testily, and then hurried to correct himself. “He alluded, Monsieur Greig, to Prince Charles Edward. We are all, I may confess, his Royal Highness's most humble servants; some of us, however--as our good friend, Captain Thurot--more actively than others. For myself I begin to weary of a cause that has been dormant for eight years, but no matter; sure one must have a recreation!” I looked at his lordship to see if he was joking. He was the relic of a handsome man, though still, I daresay, less than fifty years of age, with a clever face and gentle, just tinged by the tracery of small surface veins to a redness that accused him of too many late nights; his mouth and eyes, that at one time must have been fascinating, had the ultimate irresolution that comes to one who finds no fingerposts at life's cross-roads and thinks one road just as good's another. He was born at Atena, near Hamburg (so much I had remembered from my uncle's memoir), but he was, even in his accent, as Irish as Kerry. Someway I liked and yet doubted him, in spite of all the praise of him that I had read in a dead man's diurnal.