aps not. We read of her austere Gallic beauty in every
record and tome of the period--one of the noble women whose paths were
lit for them from birth by Destiny's relentless lamp. What did Maggie
know of the part she was to play in the history of her country? Nothing.
She lived through her girlhood unheeding; she helped her mother with the
baps and her father with the haggis; occasionally she would be given a
new plaidie--she who might have had baps, haggis, and plaidies ten
thousandfold for the asking. A word must be said of her parents. Her
father, Jaimie, known all along Deeside as Handsome Jaimie--how the
light-hearted village girls mourned when he turned minister: he was
high, high above them. Of his meeting with Janey McToddle, the Pride of
Bonny Donside, very little is written. Some say that they met in a
snowstorm on Ben Lomond, where she was tending her kine; others say that
they met on the high road to Aberdeen and his collie Jeannie bit her
collie Jock--thus cementing a friendship that was later on to ripen into
more and more--and even Maggie. Some years later they were wed, and
Jaimie led his girl-bride to the little manse which was destined to be
the birthplace of one of Scotland's saviours. History tells us little of
Maggie McWhistle's childhood: she apparently lived and breathed like any
more ordinary girl--her griddle cakes were famous adown the length and
breadth of Aberdeen. Gradually a little path came to be worn between the
manse and the kirk, seven miles away, where Maggie's feet so often trod
their way to their devotions. She was intensely religious.

One day a stranger came to Aberdeen. He had braw, braw red knees and
bonnie, bonnie red hair. History tells us that on first seeing Maggie
in her plaidie he smiled, and that the second time he saw her he
guffawed, so light-hearted was he.

One day he called at the manse, chucked Maggie under the chin, and ate
one of her baps. Eight years later he came again, and, after tweaking
her nose, ate a little haggis. By then something seemed to have told her
that he was her hero.

One dark night, so the story runs, there came a hammering on the door.
Maggie leapt out of her truckle, and wrapping the plaidie round her, for
she was a modest girl, she ran to the window.

"Wha is there?" she cried in Scotch.

The answer came back through the darkness, thrilling her to the marrow:

"Bonnie Prince Charlie!"

Maggie gave a cry, and, running down-stairs, opened