escribe his broadsword duel with Rob Roy--his campaigns
with Mar and Charles Edward--and his long seclusion (as pictured in
the story of Bradwardine) within a rocky cave situated not far from
his own house, while it was garrisoned by a party of English soldiers,
after the battle of Culloden. Here, too, still survived the trusty
henchman who had attended the chieftain in many a bloody field and
perilous escape, the same "grim-looking old Highlander" who was in the
act of cutting down Colonel Whitefoord {p.125} with his Lochaber axe
at Prestonpans when his master arrested the blow--an incident to which
Invernahyle owed his life, and we are indebted for another of the most
striking pages in Waverley.

I have often heard Scott mention some curious particulars of his first
visit to the remote fastness of one of these Highland friends; but
whether he told the story of Invernahyle, or of one of his own
relations of the Clan Campbell, I do not recollect; I rather think the
latter was the case. On reaching the brow of a bleak eminence
overhanging the primitive tower and its tiny patch of cultivated
ground, he found his host and three sons, and perhaps half-a-dozen
attendant _gillies_, all stretched half asleep in their tartans upon
the heath, with guns and dogs, and a profusion of game about them;
while in the courtyard, far below, appeared a company of women
actively engaged in loading a cart with manure. The stranger was not a
little astonished when he discovered, on descending from the height,
that among these industrious females were the laird's own lady, and
two or three of her daughters; but they seemed quite unconscious of
having been detected in an occupation unsuitable to their
rank--retired presently to their "bowers," and when they reappeared in
other dresses, retained no traces of their morning's work, except
complexions glowing with a radiant freshness, for one evening of which
many a high-bred beauty would have bartered half her diamonds. He
found the young ladies not ill informed, and exceedingly agreeable;
and the song and the dance seemed to form the invariable termination
of their busy days. I must not forget his admiration at the principal
article of this laird's first course; namely, a gigantic _haggis_,
borne into the hall in a wicker basket by two half-naked Celts, while
the piper strutted fiercely behind them, blowing a tempest of
dissonance.

These Highland visits were repeated almost every summer for s