While this discussion was taking place in Scotland Street, on the other side of town, in the playground of the Steiner School, an entirely different conversation was in progress between Bertie and his friend and confidant, Ranald Braveheart Macpherson. The two boys were by themselves, sitting on the trunk of a felled tree that the school had placed at the side of the playground with a view to allowing the children to use it for imaginative games. At one moment it might be a bus, or a stagecoach perhaps, or a mountain to be climbed by a team of small Alpinists. Now, as Bertie and Ranald sat astride it, it was a small boat braving the Minch, carrying Bertie, playing the part of Charles Edward Stuart, to Skye, from where he would go on to meet his waiting army in Glenfinnan. Ranald had objected to being cast as Flora Macdonald, and was instead a loyal Highland retainer who would accompany the Prince to Edinburgh and beyond.