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There was a pause and a whisper among the crowd"Secretary Murray ;"" Lord Lewis Gordon ;"" May be, the chevalier himsell;" such were the surmises that passed hurriedly among them, and there was obviously an increasing disposition to resist Waverley's departure. He attempted to argue mildly with them, but his voluntary ally, Mrs. Mucklewrath, broke in upon and drowned his expostulations, taking his part with an abusive violence, which was all set down to Edward's account by those on whom it was bestowed. "Ye'll stop ony gentleman that's the prince's freend?" for she too, though with other feelings, had adopted the general opinion respecting Waverley. "I daur ye to touch him," spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with claws which a vulture might have envied. "I'll set my ten commandments in the face o' the first loon that lays a finger on him."

"Gae hame, gudewife," quoth the farmer aforesaid; "it wed better set you to be nursing the gudeman's bairns than to be deaving us here."

"His bairns!" retorted the Amazon, regarding her husband with a grin of ineffable contempt-" His bairns!

"O gin ye were dead, gudeman,

And a green turf on your head, gudeman,
Then I wad ware my widowhood
Upon a ranting Highlandman."

This canticle, which excited a suppressed titter among the younger part of the audience, totally overcame the patience of the taunted man of the anvil. "Deil be in me but I put this het gad down her throat," cried he in a rhapsody of wrath, snatching a bar from the forge; and he might have executed his threat, had he not been withheld by a part of the mob, while the rest endeavoured to force the termagant out of his pre

sence.

Waverley meditated a retreat in the confusion, but his

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horse was nowhere to be seen. At length he observed, at some distance, his faithful attendant, Ebenezer, who, as soon as he had perceived the turn matters were likely to take, had withdrawn both horses from the press, and, mounted on the one, and holding the other, answered the loud and repeated cries of Waverley for his horse, Na, na! if ye are no freend to kirk and the king, and are detained as siccan a person, ye maun answer to honest men of the country for breach o' contract; and I maun keep the naig and the walise for damage and expense in respect my horse and mysell will lose to-morrow's day's wark, besides the afternoon preaching." Edward, out of patience, hemmed in and hustled by the rabble on every side and every moment expecting personal violence, resolved to try measures of intimidation, and at length drew a pocket-pistol, threatening on the one hand, to shoot whomsoever dared to stop him, and on the other menacing Ebenezer with a similar doom if he stirred a foot with the horses. The sapient Partridge says, that one man with a pistol is equal to a hundred unarmed, because, though he can shoot but one of the multitude, yet no one knows but that he himself may be that luckless individual. The levy en masse of Cairnvreckan would therefore probably have given way, nor would Ebenezer, whose natural paleness had waxed three shades more cadaverous, have ventured to dispute a mandate so enforced, had not the Vulcan of the village, eager to discharge upon some more worthy object the fury which his helpmate had provoked, and not ill satisfied to find such an object in Waverley, rushed at him with the red hot bar of iron, with such determination, as made the discharge of his pistol act of self-defence. The unfortunate man fell; and while Edward, thrilled with a natural horror at the incident, neither had the presence of mind to unsheath his sword nor to draw his remaining pistol, the populace threw themselves upon him, disarmed him, and were about to use him with great

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violence, when the appearance of a venerable clergyman, the pastor of the parish, put a curb upon their fury.

This worthy man (none of the Goukthrapples or Rentowels) maintained his character with the common people, although he preached the practical fruits of Christian faith, as well as its abstract tenets, and was respected by the higher orders, notwithstanding he declined soothing their speculative errors by converting the pulpit of the gospel into a school of heathen morality. Perhaps it is owing to this mixture of faith and practice in his doctrine, that, although his memory has formed a sort of era in the annals of Cairnvreckan, so that the parishioners, to denote what befel sixty years since, still say it happened "in good Mr. Morton's time," I have never been able to discover which he belonged to, the evangelic or the moderate party in the kirk. Nor do I hold the circumstance of much moment, since, in my own remembrance, the one was headed by an Erskine, the other by a Robertson.

Mr. Morton had been alarmed by the discharge of the pistol, and the increasing hubbub around the smithy. His first attention, after he had directed the bystanders to detain Waverley, but to abstain from injuring him, was turned to the body of Mucklewrath, over which his wife in a revulsion of feeling, was weeping, howling, and tearing her elf locks, in a state little short of distraction. Upon raising up the smith, the first discovery was, that he was alive; and the next, that he was likely to live as long as if he had never heard the report of a pistol in his life. He had made a narrow escape, however, the bullet had grazed his head, and stunned him for a moment or two, which trace terror and confusion of spirit had prolonged somewhat longer. He now arose to demand vengeance on the person of Waverley, and with difficulty acquiesced in the proposal of Mr. Morton, that he should be carried before the laird, as a justice of peace, and placed at his disposal. The rest of the assistants unanimously agreed to the measure recommended; even

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Mrs. Mucklewrath, who had begun to recover from her hysterics, whimpered forth-"She wadna say nothing against what the minister proposed; he was e'en ower gude for his trade, and she hoped to see him wi' a dainty decent bishop's gown on his back; a comelier sight than your Geneva cloaks and bands, I wiss."

All controversy being thus laid aside, Waverley, escorted by the whole inhabitants of the village, who were not bedridden, was conducted to the house of Cairnvreckan, which was about half a mile distant.

CHAPTER XXXI.

An Examination.

MAJOR MELVILLE of Cairnvreckan, an elderly gentleman, who had spent his youth in the military service, received Mr. Morton with great kindness, and our hero with civility, which the equivocal circumstances in which Edward was placed rendered constrained and distant.

The nature of the smith's hurt was inquired into, and as the actual injury was likely to prove trifling, and the crcumstances in which it was received rendered the infliction, on Edward's part, a natural act of selfdefence, the major conceived he might dismiss that matter, on Waverley's depositing in his hands a small. sum for the benefit of the wounded person.

"I could wish, sir," continued the major, "that my duty terminated here; but it is necessary that we should have some further inquiry into the cause of your journey through the country at this unfortunate and distracted time."

Mr. Ebenezer Cruickshanks now stood forth, and communicated to the magistrate all he knew or suspected from the reserve of Waverley, and the evasions of Callum Beg. The horse upon which Edward rode,

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he said, he knew to belong to Vich Ian Vohr, though he dared not tax Edward's former attendant with the fact, lest he should have his house and stables burnt over his head some night by that godless gang, the Mac-Ivors. He concluded by exaggerating his own services to kirk and state, as having been the means, under God, (as he modestly qualified the phrase,) of attaching this suspicious and formidable delinquent. He intimated hopes of future reward, and of instant reimbursement for loss of time, and even of character, by travelling in the state business upon the fast-day.

To this Major Melville answered, with great composure, that so far from claiming any merit in this affair, Mr. Cruickshanks ought to deprecate the imposition of a very heavy fine for neglecting to lodge, in terms of the recent proclamation, an account with the nearest magistrate of any stranger who came to his inn; that as Mr. Cruickshanks boasted so much of religion and loyalty, he should not impute this conduct to disaffection, but only suppose that his zeal for kirk and state had been lulled asleep by the opportunity of charging a stranger with double horse-hire; that, however, feeling himself incompetent to decide singly upon the conduct of a person of such importance, he should reserve it for consideration of the next quarter sessions. Now our history for the present saith no more of him of the Candlestick, who wended dolorous and malcontent back to his own dwelling.

Major Melville then commanded the villagers to return to their homes, excepting two, who officiated as constables, and whom he directed to wait below. The apartment was thus cleared of every person but Mr. Morton, whom the major invited to remain; a sort of factor, who acted as clerk; and Waverley himself. There ensued a painful and embarrassed pause, till Major Melville, looking upon Waverley with much compassion, and often consulting a paper or memorandum which he held in his hand, requested to know his name.- "Edward Waverley."

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