wardness with which he performed
his part. Betty Burke was regarded by the gazing passers-by as a very
strange woman. When the country-people greeted him with an obeisance, he
returned it with a bow instead of a curtsey; and in all his gestures he
forgot the woman, and retained the man. After the remonstrance upon
holding his skirts too high, he let them fall down into the streams
which often intersected his path. "Your enemies, sir," remarked
Kingsburgh, "call you a Pretender, but you are the worst at your trade
that I ever saw." "Why," replied Charles laughing, "they do me perhaps
as much injustice in this as in other respects. I have all my life
despised assumed characters, and am the worst dissembler in the world."

Lady Kingsburgh, not expecting her husband that night, had retired to
rest; and her house was not at this time in the best possible condition
for receiving visitors. Kingsburgh, however, introduced Charles into the
hall, and sent a servant up-stairs to desire Lady Kingsburgh to rise and
dress herself. But the lady was not disposed to comply with her
husband's commands that night. She sent a message to beg that he and
his guests would help themselves to whatsoever they found in the house,
and excuse her absence. As soon as she had despatched this answer, her
daughter, a child of seven years of age, ran into the room, and told
her, with much astonishment, that her father had brought home the most
odd "_ill-shaken-up wife_" that she had ever seen, and had conducted her
into the hall. Kingsburgh now made his appearance, and entreated his
wife to come down-stairs, her presence being absolutely requisite.[290]
Lady Kingsburgh was now really aroused. She could not help suspecting
that her husband had taken into his house some of those proscribed and
wretched fugitives who were skulking about the country. She could well
imagine the distress of many of the Jacobites, for a paper had been, for
some weeks, read in the kirks, forbidding all persons to give any sort
of sustenance to a rebel, under pain of being deprived of it
themselves.[291]

She now dressed herself, sending her little girl into the hall to fetch
her keys. The child went down-stairs, but returned, saying that she
could not go into the hall, the "strange woman" was walking backwards
and forwards in so frightful a manner. Lady Kingsburgh therefore went
herself, but stopped short at the door on seeing the stranger, whose
aspect seems to have been unus