PRINCE CHARLES AND THE LONG ISLAND. 449 



front He pooh-poohed their story and ridiculed their 

 fears. " Five hundred men ! " he exclaimed. " Has the 

 devil possessed you altogether ? Where, I pray you, 

 could the Prince in his present condition get a hundred, 

 much less five hundred, men together ? " He cursed the 

 ministers of Harris and South Uist for a couple of mis- 

 chief-making rascals. And then he opened his heart to 

 the Stornoway men. " I acknowledge," he said, " that 

 the Prince is at this moment in Lewis, not with five 

 hundred men, but with two attendants. And yet, let me 

 tell you, gentlemen, that if Seaforth himself were here, 

 by G ! he durst not put a hand to the Prince's breast." 



The Stornowegians were not anti-J acobites. Their 

 sympathies were obviously with Charles. But their pro- 

 prietor was working for the Government ; and an English 

 warship was at that moment not far from the town.* If 

 they helped the Prince, they exposed themselves to the 

 vengeance of the Government and the displeasure of Lord 

 Fortrose, who had given strict orders not to harbour any 

 of the Jacobites. Here, on the one hand, was an oppor- 

 tunity of doing signal service to the Government, and of 

 earning .30,000. They had only to send a dozen men 

 across to Arnish to seize the hunted scion of the Stuarts, 

 and the thing was done. But, on the other hand, Donald 

 Macleod was right. Lord Fortrose himself would not have 

 dared to lay a finger on " bonnie Prince Charlie " had he been 

 present. And there was not a man in Stornoway who 

 would soil his hands with the dirty work of earning the 

 blood-money. The person who did so would have been 

 regarded as a pariah throughout the Highlands. 



How, under the circumstances, were the townsmen of 

 Stornoway to act ? They solved the difficulty by taking a 

 middle course. They protested to Donald Macleod that 

 they had not the slightest desire to harm the Prince, nor to 

 meddle with him in any way. But they would not permit 



* Maxwell of Kirkconnel says she was actually in the harbour. This seems 

 hardly likely, as the uproar in Stornoway would have attracted her attention, 

 and nothing, in that case, could have saved the Prince. 





