‘Nay!’ suggested Tom; ‘perhaps he lives obscure because he is poor. Perhaps he is too proud to let it be known that he who exists upon a miserable two hundred and fifty pounds a year is the king of Great Britain. Your Royal Highness must not be unjust.’
‘Would that what you say were true!’ ejaculated the Princess. ‘But if he only made some sign of his desire to win his own, heaven knows that I would aid him with my fortune, and even, if need were, with my life.’
‘Your Royal Highness’s sentiments are worthy of her great lineage,’ said Tom courteously. ‘I happen to know that the facts are as I have hinted; for, although I have not yet mentioned it, I have the honour of your Royal Highness’s august nephew’s acquaintance. Indeed, I may say the king deigns to honour me with his friendship.’
‘The king!’ exclaimed the Princess, with beaming eyes—‘the king! You have heard His Majesty speak, have seen His Majesty walk, and you have not told me! Oh, Mr Checkstone, I cannot tell you how it rejoices me to have one of the king’s friends in my service!—What is His Majesty’s will? What are His Majesty’s plans? You may trust me. I am devoted wholly and entirely to his interests. How I have longed to learn of his intention to take his rightful position!’
Thus encouraged, Tom Checkstone related to the Princess a very plausible and interesting story, the main points of which he did not forget to communicate by letter to his friend in London. He assured the Princess that poverty alone prevented the king from taking action; that His Majesty chafed grievously in his enforced seclusion; and that the legitimate sovereign of Great Britain, in spite of the plebeian origin of his mother, was in all respects a worthy descendant of the Jameses.
‘Then His Majesty must come hither,’ said the Princess. ‘But I am greatly in doubt whether I can place implicit confidence in Mr M‘Dum. He is an excellent servant, but I fear he is not too loyal; and we must risk nothing.’
‘Mr M‘Dum,’ said Tom, ‘has very well taken care of himself hitherto. Your Royal Highness is perhaps not aware that he accepted a bribe from me when I applied for my present position in your Royal Highness’s household. I have his receipt for eight hundred pounds.’
‘Then, we shall certainly dismiss him,’ remarked the Princess with signs of rising anger. ‘But, as I say, he is withal an excellent servant, and it would not become us to act towards him in anger. I will pension him; and when he has left the castle, we may receive the king without any risk; for all my other servants have from their childhood been devoted to the royal cause.’
The result of this conversation—all the details of which were faithfully reported to Charlie Stuart—was that Mr M‘Dum, after a somewhat stormy scene with the Princess, quitted Balquhalloch, with an eye to an eligible public-house in Glasgow; and on the day of his departure, the Princess wrote a loyal and affectionate letter to her nephew, and despatched it to him by the hands of her chaplain, the Rev. Octavius M‘Fillan, a priest who, although he possessed no remarkable degree of intelligence, was of unimpeachable devotion to the Princess, and of great simplicity and kindness of heart. ‘Our castle,’ the letter concluded, ‘is held at your Majesty’s disposal; and all within it is at your Royal service.’
Father M‘Fillan, with much ceremony, delivered the missive to Charlie at his chambers in the Inner Temple; and ‘the king’ was pleased to say in reply that he would at his earliest convenience visit his well-beloved aunt in the north.