“Ye’ll regret that. She’s been chewing everything in sight.”

“It’s a hat,” said Matthew, in a quiet tone that held a challenge. “A thing, an object, easily replaced, that will not ever have the value of a child.”

Between them, Maggie took the hat in her two hands and pulled it down over her head so that she fairly disappeared in it, announcing, “Hat!”

It eased the tension. Matthew lifted up the brim as though to see that she was still inside. “Where did you get your bonny hair?” he asked, and then, to Barbara, “She’s your sister’s child, you said. Did not your sister have red hair like you?”

“She did. But Maggie’s father was a Graeme.”

“Was? Is he no longer living?”

“Aye, he lives,” said Barbara. “I will tell ye later how it is, when there are no small ears to overhear.”

The life of Maggie’s father, young Patrick Graeme of Inchbrakie, had grown complicated. Last year he had married onto a young lady of good birth, but shortly afterward he’d fought a man and killed him, and although the family of the man he’d killed had not brought charges yet, it was suspected that in time they would, being so firmly for King William when those of the house of Inchbrakie were Jacobites.

“That minds me,” Archie said, and turned to Lily, “your friend Colonel Graeme is aboard a ship, here in our harbor.”

Lily stared. The voices… “Are ye certain?”

Archie gave her the look that meant he was insulted she would ask. “On Saturday he came to Edinburgh with General Buchan and Brigadier Cannon and others who’d been granted passes to go beyond seas. I don’t doubt their intent was to stay in town until their ship was made ready, but they were too well received. Your colonel, I’m told, could scarce walk in the street without meeting a friend or admirer, and there is nothing the government does distrust more than a popular Graham. So now they’ve been all ordered onto the ship, even though it’s not ready to sail.”

Henry asked, “Why were they given passes by the king, and not made prisoner?”

Archie had been told it had to do with the arrangement made between King William and the Highland forces last year, when they’d ceased their fighting, as a way to keep the peace.

Walter said, “Aye, we’ve all seen how well the Prince of Orange does intend to keep the peace. Did not he show us at Glencoe?”

There was a silence then. The news from Glencoe had just lately reached them, and reports were yet confused, but what they’d heard had left them horrified.

When the fighting in the Highlands had come to an end last summer, King William had offered terms of peace to all the clans if they would swear oaths of allegiance to him. That had been, as Walter had explained to Lily at the time, dishonest. “He expects them to refuse,” Walter had said, “because the Highlanders are Jacobites. No doubt he has signed letters of fire and sword and holds them ready so his troops can move against the Highland men the first of January, when the limit of their time expires.”