"HAROLD TRACY," "BELLA TRELAWNEY," "DICK TARLTON," MARION BERNARD," "FRED
GRAHAM," "CHARLES VAVASSEUR," "HENRI DE LA TOUR," "WOMAN AND HER
MASTER," "FRED VERNON," "HARRY ASHTON," "ELLEN DE VERE," "FRED
ARDEN," "MINNIE GRAY," "GUS HOWARD," "TEMPTATION,"
ESTER," "STANFIELD HALL," "ROMANTIC INCIDENTS IN THE

"ROCH-

LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND," "AMY Lawrence,"
"THE VIRGIN QUEEN," ETC., ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK

DICK & FITZGERALD, No. 18 ANN STREET.

New

THE YOUNG PRETENDER,

CHAPTER I.

Edina, Scotland's darling seat,

All hail thy palaces and towers!
Where once beneath a monarch's feet
Sat legislation's sovereign powers.

BURNS.

her veins, to our own Sovereign Lady, Victoria.

The Queen unites in her own fair person the Stuart and the Guelph; and if she borrows from her German ancestry the steady virtues that command respect and THE summer sun was up betimes, clear-esteem, she has inherited from her Scoting away the Scotch mist that hung over tish forefathers the qualities that captitheauld toon of Edinbro',' and waking vate and endear. some to weal and some to woe-some to

toil and some to trifle-some to love and some to hate some to plenty, and some to pinching want! But so goes the

world..

But although the third George, the fourth William, and the first Victoria rank eminently in history as popular sovereigns, George the First and Second were singularly repulsive, unloving, and unloved

In 1744, as in 1857, the morning sun To their personal disqualifications and woke up human beings with the same pas-unpopular manners, much of the long-prosions, views, objects, and predilections, to tracted distaste to their dynasty may be play their parts in the same eternal dra- traced.

ma of life.

It is true some years, like some human beings, are remarkable for elements of strong interest; and of all such years there is none recorded more absorbing than the year 1744-45.

The nobility of Scotland, at the time of our tale, avoided the court of St. James's, from a feeling of general disaffection towards the reigning house.

To many the actual sovereign was merely Elector of Hanover-a stranger who usurped the Stuarts' throne.

The affair of 1715 had left wounds

And of all such human beings, none who excites feelings more intense, more thrilling, or more lasting, than those awakened which were yet unhealed, for there were by the gallant young 'Chevalier St. few families which had not suffered from George' the brave, ill-fated Charles Ed-attainder or confiscation, either in the chief ward—the Last of the Stuarts—the Young or collateral branches.

Pretender.

On the bright summer morning to which we allude, many who had passed the night in pledging, in deep draughts of usquebaugh, Charlie over the water,' woke hard-headed, well-seasoned topers that they were, 'ne'er a pin the waur'-to plan how Charlie over the water' should gain possession of what they considered Charlie's land.

A passionate love for the exiled Stuarts, and a corresponding distrust and dislike of the reigning monarch, filled, at that time, all the noblest hearts in Scotland.

Amongst the most distinguished of these was the house of Arran. Duncan, eleventh earl of that ancient name, escaped the scaffold only by dying of his wounds while a prisoner in Stirling; but his estates were confiscated, subject only to the payment of an ample dower to his widowed countess -whose near relationship to the ducal house of Argyle prevented her being involved in the ruin which overtook all of her husband's clan and name.

The difficulty which the government experienced in finding purchasers for the forfeited lands, backed by the interest of The Stuarts, with all their faults, had a her family, induced the crown finally to singular power of winning and keeping the re-grant her late husband's possessions to passionate devotion of their people-a the widow, who parted with her jewels, power which has descended, with that por- plate, in fact every movable of valne she tion of their rich old blood that flows in possessed, to raise the large sum by the