My Dear Duncan: To you, the well-read historian, there is little need to say that every event in this tale is not recorded for gospel. It is the story of the bleak side of the Forty-five, of goodness without wisdom, of wisdom first cousin to vice, of those who, like a certain Lord, had no virtue but an undeniable greatness. You will ask my authority for Francis's mission to Lovat,—or the singular conduct of Mr. John Murray. You will inquire how the final execution came six months too soon, and you will ransack Broughton's Journal in vain to find my veracious narrative of the doings of his beautiful wife. Such little matters are the chronicler's licence. But some excuse is needed for the introduction of your kinsman, the lord President, and the ragged picture of so choice a character. My apology must be that my canvas is no place for honest men, and the Laird of Culloden would have been discredited by his company. But, such as it is, I dedicate to you this chronicle of moorland wars, for the sake of an "auld Highland story" which neither of us would wish to see forgotten. J. B.
樂天KOBO
