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inspiration of the tartans; for, though Waverley be always a young fellow of sense and honour, I have hitherto often found him a very absent and inattentive companion."

"We are the more obliged to him," said the Prince, "for having reserved for this evening qualities which even such intimate friends had not discovered.-But come, gentlemen, the night advances, and the business of to-morrow must be early thought upon. Each take charge of his fair partner, and honour a small refreshment with your company."

He led the way to another suite of apartments, and assumed the seat and canopy at the head of a long range of tables, with an air of dignity mingled with courtesy, which well became his high birth and lofty pretensions. An hour had hardly flown away when the musicians played the signal for parting so well known in Scotland.1

"Good night, then," said the Chevalier, rising; "Good night, and joy be with you!-Good night, fair ladies, who have so highly honoured a proscribed and banished Prince.Good night, my brave friends; may the happiness we have this evening experienced be an omen of our return to these our paternal halls, speedily and in triumph, and of many and many future meetings of mirth and pleasure in the palace of Holyrood!"

When the Baron of Bradwardine afterwards mentioned this adieu of the Chevalier, he never failed to repeat in a melan choly tone,

"Audiit, et voti Phoebus succedere partem

Mente dedit; partem volucres dispersit in auras ;"

"which," as he added, "is weel rendered into English metre by my friend Bangour:

"Ae half the prayer wi' Phoebus grace did find,
The t'other half he whistled down the wind."

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CHAPTER XLIV

THE MARCH

THE Conflicting passions and exhausted feelings of Waverler! had resigned him to late but sound repose. He was dreaming] of Glennaquoich, and had transferred to the halls of Ian nan Chaistel the festal train which so lately graced those of Holy

1 Which is, or was wont to be, the old air of "Good night and joy be wi'

you

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rood. The pibroch too was distinctly heard; and this at least was no delusion, for the "proud step of the chief piper of the "chlain Mac-Ivor" was perambulating the court before the door of his Chieftain's quarters, and, as Mrs. Flockhart, apparently no friend to his minstrelsy, was pleased to observe, "garring the very stane-and-lime wa's dingle wi' his screeching." Of course it soon became too powerful for Waverley's dream, with which it had at first rather harmonized.

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The sound of Callum's brogues in his apartment (for MacIvor had again assigned Waverley to his care) was the next note of parting. Winna yere honour bang up? Vich Ian Vohr and ta Prince are awa to the lang green glen ahint the clachan, tat they ca' the King's Park,1 and mony ane's on his ain shanks the day that will be carried on ither folk's ere night.”

Waverley sprung up, and, with Callum's assistance and instructions, adjusted his tartans in proper costume. Callum told him also, "tat his leather dorlach wi' the lock on her was come frae Doune, and she was awa' again in the wain wi' Vich lan Vohr's walise."

By this periphrasis Waverley readily apprehended his portmanteau was intended. He thought upon the mysterious packet of the maid of the cavern, which seemed always to escape him when within his very grasp. But this was no time for indulgence of curiosity; and having declined Mrs. Flockhart's compliment of a morning, i.e. a matutinal dram, being probably the only man in the Chevalier's army by whom such a courtesy would have been rejected, he made his adieus, and departed with Callum.

"Callum," said he, as they proceeded down a dirty close to gain the southern skirts of the Canongate, "what shall I do for a horse?"

"Ta deil ane ye maun think o'," said Callum. "Vich Ian Vohr's marching on foot at the head o' his kin, (not to say ta Prince, wha does the like,) wi' his target on his shoulder; and ye maun e'en be neighbour-like."

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“And so I will, Callum-give me my target ;-so, there we are fixed. How does it look?"

"Like the bra' Highlander tat's painted on the board afore the mickle change-house they ca' Luckie Middlemass's," answered Callum; meaning, I must observe, a high compli

1 The main body of the Highland army encamped, or rather bivouacked, in that part of the King's Park which lies towards the village of Duddingston.

ment, for, in his opinion, Luckie Middlemass's sign was an exquisite specimen of art. Waverley, however, not feeling the full force of this polite simile, asked him no further questions.

Upon extricating themselves from the mean and dirty suburbs of the metropolis, and emerging into the open air, Waverley felt a renewal both of health and spirits, and turned his recollection with firmness upon the events of the preceding evening, and with hope and resolution towards those of the approaching day.

When he had surmounted a small craggy eminence, called St. Leonard's Hill, the King's Park, or the hollow between the mountain of Arthur's seat, and the rising grounds on which the southern part of Edinburgh is now built, lay beneath him, and displayed a singular and animating prospect. It was occupied by the army of the Highlanders, now in the act of preparing for their march. Waverley had already seen some thing of the kind at the hunting match which he attended with Fergus Mac-Ivor; but this was on a scale of much greater magnitude, and incomparably deeper interest. The rocks, which formed the background of the scene, and the very sky itself, rang with the clang of the bagpipers, summon ing forth, each with his appropriate pibroch, his chieftain and clan. The mountaineers, rousing themselves from their couch under the canopy of heaven with the hum and bustle of a confused and irregular multitude, like bees alarmed and arm ing in their hives, seemed to possess all the pliability of move ment fitted to execute military manoeuvres. Their motions appeared spontaneous and confused, but the result was order and regularity; so that a general must have praised the conclusion, though a martinet might have ridiculed the method by which it was attained.

The sort of complicated medley created by the hasty arrangements of the various clans under their respective banners, for the purpose of getting into the order of march, was in itself a gay and lively spectacle. They had no tents to strike, having generally, and by choice, slept upon the open field, although the autumn was now waning, and the nights began to be frosty. For a little space, while they were getting into order, there was exhibited a changing, fluctuating, and confused appearance of waving tartans and floating plumes, and of banners displaying the proud gathering word of Clanronald, Ganion Coheriga-(Gainsay who dares); Loch Sloy, the watchword of the Mac-Farlanes; Forth, fortune, and

fill the fetters, the motto of the Marquis of Tullibardine; Bydand, that of Lord Lewis Gordon; and the appropriate signal words and emblems of many other chieftains and clans.

At length the mixed and wavering multitude arranged themselves into a narrow and dusky column of great length, stretching through the whole extent of the valley. In the front of the column the standard of the Chevalier was displayed, bearing a red cross upon a white ground, with the notto Tandem Triumphans. The few cavalry, being chiefly Lowland gentry, with their domestic servants and retainers, ormed the advanced guard of the army; and their standards, of which they had rather too many in respect to their numbers, vere seen waving upon the extreme verge of the horizon. Many horsemen of this body, among whom Waverley accidentally remarked Balmawhapple, and his lieutenant Jinker, (which ast, however, had been reduced, with several others, by the advice of the Baron of Bradwardine, to the situation of what e called reformed officers, or reformadoes,) added to the iveliness, though by no means to the regularity, of the scene, by galloping their horses as fast forward as the press would permit, o join their proper station in the van. The fascinations of the Circes of the High Street, and the potations of strength with which they had been drenched over night, had probably detained these heroes within the walls of Edinburgh somewhat later than was consistent with their morning duty. Of such loiterers, the prudent took the longer and circuitous, but more open route, to attain their place in the march, by keeping at some distance from the infantry, and making their way through the enclosures to the right, at the expense of leaping over or pulling down the dry-stone fences. The irregular appearance and vanishing of these small parties of horsemen, as well as the confusion occasioned by those who endeavoured, though generally without effect, to press to the front through. the crowd of Highlanders, maugre their curses, oaths, and opposition, added to the picturesque wildness, what it took from the military regularity, of the scene.

While Waverley gazed upon this remarkable spectacle, rendered yet more impressive by the occasional discharge of cannon-shot from the Castle at the Highland guards as they were withdrawn from its vicinity to join their main body, Callum, with his usual freedom of interference, reminded him that Vich Ian Vohr's folk were nearly at the head of the

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column of march which was still distant, and that "they would gang very fast after the canon fired." Thus admonished, Waverley walked briskly forward, yet often casting a glance upon the darksome clouds of warriors who were collected before and beneath him. A nearer view, indeed, rather diminished the effect impressed on the mind by the more distant appearance of the army. The leading men of each clan were well armed with broadsword, target, and fusee to which all added the dirk, and most the steel pistol. But these consisted of gentlemen, that is, relations of the chief however distant, and who had an immediate title to his countenance and protection. Finer and hardier men could not have been selected out of any army in Christendom while the free and independent habits which each possessed and which each was yet so well taught to subject to the com mand of his chief, and the peculiar mode of discipline adopted in Highland warfare, rendered them equally formid able by their individual courage and high spirit, and from their rational conviction of the necessity of acting in unison, and of giving their national mode of attack the fullest opportunity of success.

But in a lower rank to these; there were found individuals of an inferior description, the common peasantry of the Highland country, who, although they did not allow themselves to be so called, and claimed often, with apparent truth, to be of more ancient descent than the masters whom they served, bore nevertheless, the livery of extreme penury, being indifferently accoutred, and worse armed, half naked, stinted in growth, and miserable in aspect. Each important clan had some of those Helots attached to them; thus, the Mac-Couls, though tracing their descent from Comhal, the father of Finn of Fingal, were a sort of Gibeonites, or hereditary servants to the Stewarts of Appine; the Macbeths, descended from the unhappy monarch of that name, were subjects to the Morays, and clan Donnochy, or Robertsons of Athole; and many other examples might be given, were it not for the risk of hurting any pride of clanship which may yet be left, and thereby drawing a Highland tempest into the shop of my publisher. Now these same Helots, though forced into the field by the arbitrary authority of the chieftains under whom they hewed wood and drew water, were in general, very sparingly fed, ill dressed, and worse armed. The latter circumstance was indeed owing chiefly to the general disarming act, which had been carried into effect

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