Bonnie Prince Charlie : a Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden eBook

So Malcolm made a three weeks’ stay at his brother’s, and then started upon his new occupation of driving Highland cattle down into Lancashire.  Once every two or three months he came to Glasgow for a week or two between his trips.  In spite of Andrew’s entreaties he refused on these occasions to take up his abode with him, but took a lodging not far off, coming in the evening for an hour to smoke a pipe with his brother, and never failing of a morning to come in and take the child for a long walk with him, carrying him upon his shoulder, and keeping up a steady talk with him in his native French, which he was anxious that the boy should nor forget, as at some time or other he might again return to France.

Some weeks after Malcolm’s return to Scotland, he wrote to Colonel Leslie, briefly giving his address at Glasgow; but making no allusion to the child, as, if the colonel were still in prison, the letter would be sure to be opened by the authorities.  He also wrote to the major, giving him his address, and begging him to communicate it to Colonel Leslie whenever he should see him; that done, there was nothing for it but to wait quietly.  The post was so uncertain in those days that he had but slight hope that either of his letters would ever reach their destination.  No answer came to either of his letters.

Four years later Malcolm went over to Paris, and cautiously made inquiries; but no one had heard anything of Colonel Leslie from the day he had been arrested.  The regiment was away fighting in the Low Countries, and the only thing Malcolm could do was to call upon the people who had had charge of the child, to give them his address in case the colonel should ever appear to inquire of them.  He found, however, the house tenanted by other people.  He learned that the last occupants had left years before.  The neighbors remembered that one morning early some officers of the law had come to the house, and the man had been seized and carried away.  He had been released some months later, only to find that his wife had died of grief and anxiety, and he had then sold off his goods and gone no one knew whither.  Malcolm, therefore, returned to Glasgow, with the feeling that he had gained nothing by his journey.

CHAPTER II:  The Jacobite Agent.

So twelve years passed.  Ronald Leslie grew up a sturdy lad, full of fun and mischief in spite of the sober atmosphere of the bailie’s house; and neither flogging at school nor lecturing at home appeared to have the slightest effect in reducing him to that state of sober tranquillity which was in Mrs. Anderson’s eyes the thing to be most desired in boys.  Andrew was less deeply shocked than his wife at the discovery of Ronald’s various delinquencies, but his sense of order and punctuality was constantly outraged.  He was, however, really fond of the lad; and even Mrs. Anderson, greatly as the boy’s ways constantly disturbed and ruffled her, was at heart as fond of him as was her husband.  She considered, and not altogether wrongly, that his wilderness, as she called it, was in no slight degree due to his association with her husband’s brother.