It was after Culloden. Though I, David Scott, was an unimportant person yet I lay in the Tolbooth, in Edinburgh, with my betters. I was a young man-twenty-two. I had fought for the Stuarts at Prestonpans, Falkirk and Culloden, without the least question that I can remember arising in my mind, that being the politics of my chief and my family and nearer acquaintance. Now I made as little question that I would not lie there in irons if I could help it. No, nor be shipped to Barbados or Virginia if I missed hanging!
I loosened a clamped bit of iron from the wall and turned it into a file.
It was dark night, a week later, when I got free. Dark and stormy and chill-in June, I guessed. I lifted the stanchels from the window and laid them all quietly upon the floor. Then I got through, and it was narrow indeed, that window, but I was thin enough from little fare and much misery. Got through and held by my hands for a moment, and dropped, and I knew that there was deep depth and I might break my legs.