of his fortune's ladder, received the personally given thanks of his
Prince and a captaincy in the none too rapidly growing army.

CHAPTER XIX

The castle, defiant, untakable save by long siege and famine, held for
King George by a garrison of a few hundreds, spread itself like a rock
lion in a high-lifted rock lair. Bands of Highlanders watched its
gates and accesses, guarding against Hanoverian sallies. From the
castle down stretched Edinburgh, heaped upon its long, spinelike hill,
to the palace of Holyrood, and all its tall houses, tall and dark, and
all its wynds and closes, and all its strident voices, and all its
moving folk, seemed to have in mind that palace and the banner before
it. The note of the having rang jubilation in all its degrees, or with
a lower and a muffled sound distaste and fear, or it aimed at a middle
strain neither high nor low, a golden mean to be kept until there
might be seen what motif, after all, was going to prevail! It would
never do, thought some, to be at this juncture too clamorous either
way. But to the unpondering ear the jubilation carried it, as to the
eye tartans and white cockades made color, made high light, splashed
and starred and redeemed the gray town. There was one thing that could
not but appeal. A Scots royal line had come into its home nest at
Holyrood. Not for many and many and many a year had such a thing as
that happened! If matters went in a certain way Edinburgh might
regain ancient pomp and circumstance. That was a consideration that
every hour arranged a new plea in the citizen heart.

Excitement, restless movement, tendency to come together in a crowd,
were general, as were ejaculation, nervous laughter, declamation. The
roll of drum, call of trumpet, skirl of pipes, did not lack. Charles
Edward's army encamped itself at Duddingston a little to the east of
the city. But its units came in numbers into the town. The warlike hue
diffused itself. Horsemen were frequent, and a continual entering of
new adherents, men in small or large clusters, marching in from the
country, asking the way to the Prince. For all the buzzing and
thronging, great order prevailed. Women sat or stood at windows, or
passed in and out of dark wynds, or, escorted, picked their way at
street crossings. Now and then went by a sedan-chair. Many women
showed in their faces a truly religious fervor, a passionate Jacobite
loyalty, lighting like a flame. Many sewed white cockades. All