Life of Flora Macdonald and her adventures with Prince Charles

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kindest terms, and expressed a hope that her plans would
be attended with success.
His Royal Highness then retired with O'Neal to the cleft
of a rock in the neighbourhood to get robed in his new
vestments. After an absence of twenty minutes he re-
turned, when to the no small merriment of the ladies, he
stood before them as a tall, awkward, Irish servant. Scarcely
had the metamorphosis been completed than a private
messenger arrived, announcing that Captain Ferguson and
Major Allan Macdonald, with troops of soldiers, had reached
Ormiclade, and that in consequence it was absolutely ne-
cessary that Lady Clanranald should hasten home to avoid
suspicion. She accordingly took an affectionate leave of the
Prince, and left the heroic Flora, Captain O'Neal, and Niel
MacEachainn to pass the night with him.
It was now a period of indescribable anxiety, yet the soul
of Flora felt no fear. She rose superior to the dire emer-
gency of that eventful evening, and in none of the trying
scenes of her chequered life does she appear to more ad-
vantage than in her firmness and mental determination that
night, in that cave, in the presence of the Prince and his
fr'ends, after the departure of Lady Clanranald. Captain
O'Neal, who had been the inseparable companion of His
Royal Highness, insisted on accompanying him from the
island, while the Prince, in turn, refused to be separated
from his faithful friend. At this juncture Flora addressed
the Prince, and told him in a firm, determined tone of voice,
that his proposal to Captain O'Neal was utterly and clearly
impracticable ! She spoke respectfully, but very decidedly,
and her demeanour on this occasion showed the natural
inflexibility of her will as well as the sagacity of her judg
ment. "Your Royal Highness must at once understand," she
said, " that as I procured passports for three persons only ;
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