In the next story, called “The Red Eagle,” another stage is reached.  The Highland chief who went to visit Dr. Beaton in Westminster has passed his youth, and, in middle age, is astounded by some neighbourly gossip concerning a mysterious personage who has taken up his quarters in an adjacent mansion.  This unknown individual is described as wearing the red tartan, and as having that peculiar look of the eye “which was never in the head of man nor bird but the eagle and Prince Charlie.”  His name also is given as Captain O’Haleran, so that there can be no difficulty in tracing his history back to the time when the commodore and the mysterious infant sailed from the Mediterranean port toward the west.  Moreover, it seems that he is the reputed son of an admiral who lays claim to a Scottish peerage, who had married a southern heiress against the wishes of his relatives, and had assumed her name; and that his French valet is in the habit of paying him great deference, and occasionally styles him “Monseigneur” and “Altesse Royal.”  As if this hint were not sufficient, it is incidentally mentioned that a very aged Highland chief, who is almost in his dotage, no sooner set eyes upon the “Red Eagle” than he addressed him as Prince Charlie, and told his royal highness that the last time he saw him was on the morning of Culloden.

In the third and last of the tales—­“The Wolf’s Den”—­the “Red Eagle” reappears, and is married to an English lady named Catherine Bruce.  His pretensions to royalty are even more plainly acknowledged than before; and in the course of the story the Chevalier Graeme, chamberlain to the Countess d’Albanie, addresses him as “My Prince.”  The inference is obvious.  The Highland hero with the wonderful eyes was the child of the pretender; he espoused an English lady, and the names on the title-page of the book which tells this marvellous history lead us to believe that the marriage was fruitful, and that “John Sobieski Stuart” and “Charles Edward Stuart” were the offspring of the union, and as such inherited whatever family pretensions might exist to the sovereignty of the British empire.

This very pretty story might have passed with the public as a mere romance, and, possibly, the two names on the title-page might have been regarded as mere noms de plume, if vague reports had not previously been circulated which made it apparent that the motive of the so-called Stuarts was to deceive the public rather than to amuse them.

There seemed, indeed, to be little ground for believing this romantic story to be true, and when it was made public it was immediately rent to pieces.  One shrewd critic, in particular, tore the veil aside, and in the pages of the Quarterly Review revealed the truth.  He plainly showed the imposture, both by direct and collateral evidence, and traced the sham Stuarts through all the turnings of their tortuous lives.  By him Commodore O’Haleran, who is said to have carried off the child, is shown to be