No sooner had I taken out the drain than I felt hugely better , and could look on and listen , still a little mistily perhaps , but no longer with the same groundless horror and distress of mind . It was certainly a strange place , and we had a strange host . In his long hiding , Cluny had grown to have all manner of precise habits , like those of an old maid . He had a particular place , where no one else must sit ; the Cage was arranged in a particular way , which none must disturb ; cookery was one of his chief fancies , and even while he was greeting us in , he kept an eye to the collops . It appears , he sometimes visited or received visits from his wife and one or two of his nearest friends , under the cover of night ; but for the more part lived quite alone , and communicated only with his sentinels and the gillies that waited on him in the Cage . The first thing in the morning , one of them , who was a barber , came and shaved him , and gave him the news of the country , of which he was immoderately greedy . There was no end to his questions ; he put them as earnestly as a child ; and at some of the answers , laughed out of all bounds of reason , and would break out again laughing at the mere memory , hours after the barber was gone . To be sure , there might have been a purpose in his questions ; for though he was thus sequestered , and like the other landed gentlemen of Scotland , stripped by the late Act of Parliament of legal powers , he still exercised a patriarchal justice in his clan . Disputes were brought to him in his hiding-hole to be decided ; and the men of his country , who would have snapped their fingers at the Court of Session , laid aside revenge and paid down money at the bare word of this forfeited and hunted outlaw . When he was angered , which was often enough , he gave his commands and breathed threats of punishment like any king ; and his gillies trembled and crouched away from him like children before a hasty father . With each of them , as he entered , he ceremoniously shook hands , both parties touching their bonnets at the same time in a military manner . Altogether , I had a fair chance to see some of the inner workings of a Highland clan ; and this with a proscribed , fugitive chief ; his country conquered ; the troops riding upon all sides in quest of him , sometimes within a mile of where he lay ; and when the least of the ragged fellows whom he rated and threatened , could have made a fortune by betraying him . On that first day , as soon as the collops were ready , Cluny gave them with his own hand a squeeze of a lemon -LRB- for he was well supplied with luxuries -RRB- and bade us draw in to our meal . `` They , '' said he , meaning the collops , `` are such as I gave his Royal Highness in this very house ; bating the lemon juice , for at that time we were glad to get the meat and never fashed for kitchen . * Indeed , there were mair dragoons than lemons in my country in the year forty-six . '' * Condiment . I do not know if the collops were truly very good , but my heart rose against the sight of them , and I could eat but little . All the while Cluny entertained us with stories of Prince Charlie 's stay in the Cage , giving us the very words of the speakers , and rising from his place to show us where they stood . By these , I gathered the Prince was a gracious , spirited boy , like the son of a race of polite kings , but not so wise as Solomon . I gathered , too , that while he was in the Cage , he was often drunk ; so the fault that has since , by all accounts , made such a wreck of him , had even then begun to show itself .
We were no sooner done eating than XXXXX brought out an old , thumbed , greasy pack of cards , such as you may find in a mean inn ; and his eyes brightened in his face as he proposed that we should fall to playing .
Cage Cluny Condiment Scotland Solomon collops dragoons gillies hours night