tributed white
cockades to the crowd. Even grave Whig statesmen like the Lord
President Forbes were disturbed by the enthusiastic Jacobitism that
possessed all the Scotch ladies. More than one followed the example of
the high-spirited Miss Lumsden, who let her lover clearly understand
that she would have nothing more to say to him unless he took up arms
for the Prince, and doubtless more young gallants than Robert Strange
joined the rebels for no better reason than their ladies' command.

[Illustration: Mrs. Murray of Broughton distributes cockades to the
crowd]

A ball was given at Holyrood that same evening, and surrounded by all
that was bravest and most beautiful and brilliant in Scottish society,
it was no wonder that Charles felt that this was but the beginning of a
larger and more complete triumph.

V

PRESTONPANS

IN less than a month Prince Charles had marched through a kingdom, and
gained a capital, but he felt his triumph insecure till he had met his
enemies in fair fight. Nor were his followers less eager for battle. In
a council of war held at Holyrood, Charles declared his intention of
leading the army against Cope, and of charging in person at its head.
_That_, however, the chiefs would not hear of; the Prince's life was
all-important to their cause, and must not be rashly exposed to danger.
The arms that the Edinburgh trained bands had used to so little
purpose--about a thousand muskets--had fallen into the hands of their
enemies; but even with this addition, the Highland soldiers were
insufficiently accoutred. The gentlemen, who marched in the front ranks,
were, it is true, completely armed with broadsword, musket, pistol, and
dirk, but in the rank and file many an unkempt, half-clothed, ill-fed
cateran carried merely a bill-hook or scytheblade fixed into a long
pole. It was the swiftness and splendid daring of their onset that made
these ill-armed, untrained clansmen the equals or more than the equals
of the regular army that opposed them.

In the meantime Cope, with his army of 2,000 foot, reinforced by the
fugitive dragoons, some 600 men under Gardiner, were marching from
Dunbar. Gardiner, as brave a soldier as he was a good and devout
Christian, was full of foreboding. The 'canter of Coltbridge' had broken
his heart; a 'most foul flight,' he called it, and added, to a friend
who tried to comfort him, that there were not ten men in his troop whom
he could trust not to run away at the first