At length Colonel Whitefoord applied to the Duke of Cumberland in person.  From him, also, he received a positive refusal.  He then limited his request, for the present, to a protection for Stewart’s house, wife, children, and property.  This was also refused by the Duke; on which Colonel Whitefoord, taking his commission from his bosom, laid it on the table before his Royal Highness with much emotion, and asked permission to retire from the service of a sovereign who did not know how to spare a vanquished enemy.  The Duke was struck, and even affected.  He bade the Colonel take up his commission, and granted the protection he required.  If was issued just in time to save the house, corn, and cattle at Invernahyle, from the troops who were engaged in laying waste what it was the fashion to call ‘the country of the enemy.’  A small encampment of soldiers was formed on Invernahyle’s property, which they spared while plundering the country around, and searching in every direction for the leaders of the insurrection, and for Stewart in particular.  He was much nearer them than they suspected; for, hidden in a cave (like the Baron of Bradwardine), he lay for many days so near the English sentinels, that he could hear their muster-roll called, His food was brought to him by one of his daughters, a child of eight years old, whom Mrs. Stewart was under the necessity of entrusting with this commission; for her own motions, and those of all her elder inmates, were closely watched.  With ingenuity beyond her years, the child used to stray about among the soldiers, who were rather kind to her, and thus seize the moment when she was unobserved, and steal into the thicket, when she deposited whatever small store of provisions she had in charge at some marked spot, where her father might find it.  Invernahyle supported life for several weeks by means of these precarious supplies; and as he had been wounded in the battle of Culloden, the hardships which he endured were aggravated by great bodily pain.  After the soldiers had removed their quarters, he had another remarkable escape.

As he now ventured to his own house at night, and left it in the morning, he was espied during the dawn by a party of the enemy, who fired at and pursued him.  The fugitive being fortunate enough to escape their search, they returned to the house, and charged the family with harbouring one of the proscribed traitors.  An old woman had presence of mind enough to maintain that the man they had seen was the shepherd.  ‘Why did he not stop when we called to him?’ said the soldier.—­’He is as deaf, poor man, as a peat-stack,’ answered the ready-witted domestic.—­’Let him be sent for, directly.’  The real shepherd accordingly was brought from the hill, and as there was time to tutor him by the way, he was as deaf when he made his appearance, as was necessary to sustain his character.  Invernahyle was afterwards pardoned under the Act of Indemnity.