To this comrade in defeat they owed also the clothes they now wore, as they had considered it better advised to appear as ordinary gentlemen in their journey through England, than to use a disguise which it would require some acting to carry off. Having lived a part of his time in the great world, this Highland laird was possessed of a considerable wardrobe besides that limited to the national dress, and in order to furnish out his two friends he had risked with them a secret visit by night to his own mansion, which was under the intermittent watch of government troops. The gentleman was of a build rather lighter than Roughwood and stouter than Everell, so that his loosest set of garments was not impossible of wear to the former, and his tightest did not hang too limply on the body of the latter. Discarding entirely their battle-worn and earth-soiled clothes for these, and otherwise altering and augmenting their equipment at their friend’s expense, the two fugitives had, by travelling at night and making a carefully planned dash at the most critical point, put themselves outside of the region surrounded by the Duke of Cumberland’s forces. Thereafter they had dared to move by day, hiring horses; and either Everell’s boldness or Roughwood’s caution, or both, had carried them so far without other adverse chance than the meeting with the man who remembered Everell from their encounter at Culloden. Being without passports, they had avoided every place where troops were said to be stationed, and in crossing the border they had kept to the moors instead of the roads: for their eccentric manner of travelling, their invention was equal to such pretexts as the curiosity of horse-boys and others might require.
When the servant left them to their dinner, they reverted to their former subject, talking as they ate.
“’Tis all plain sailing, to my sight,” said Everell, cheerfully, “until we entrust our precious bodies to the care of your friend the smuggler.”
“I’ll warrant Budge to be true stuff,” replied Roughwood, confidently. “He would risk his cutter to save my neck. We used to play with his children on the cliffs, he and I.—And now I shall be looking on those cliffs for the last time, perhaps,—and on England! Well, ’tis the fate of losers in the game of rebellion.” He made no attempt to restrain the sigh this melancholy reflection evoked.