s particularly vain; too
lazy, perhaps, to cut them down, the spoilers, with malevolent ingenuity,
had mined them and placed a quantity of gunpowder in the cavity. One had
been shivered to pieces by the explosion, and the fragments lay scattered
around, encumbering the ground it had so long shadowed. The other mine
had been more partial in its effect. About one-fourth of the trunk of the
tree was torn from the mass, which, mutilated and defaced on the one
side, still spread on the other its ample and undiminished boughs.
[Footnote: A pair of chestnut trees, destroyed, the one entirely and the
other in part, by such a mischievous and wanton act of revenge, grew at
Invergarry Castle, the fastness of MacDonald of Glengarry.]

Amid these general marks of ravage, there were some which more
particularly addressed the feelings of Waverley. Viewing the front of the
building thus wasted and defaced, his eyes naturally sought the little
balcony which more properly belonged to Rose's apartment, her troisieme,
or rather cinquieme, etage. It was easily discovered, for beneath it lay
the stage-flowers and shrubs with which it was her pride to decorate it,
and which had been hurled from the bartizan; several of her books were
mingled with broken flower-pots and other remnants. Among these Waverley
distinguished one of his own, a small copy of Ariosto, and gathered it as
a treasure, though wasted by the wind and rain.

While, plunged in the sad reflections which the scene excited, he was
looking around for some one who might explain the fate of the
inhabitants, he heard a voice from the interior of the building singing,
in well-remembered accents, an old Scottish song:--

They came upon us in the night,
And brake my bower and slew my knight;
My servants a' for life did flee,
And left us in extremitie.

They slew my knight, to me sae dear;
They slew my knight, and drave his gear;
The moon may set, the sun may rise,
But a deadly sleep has closed his eyes.

[Footnote: The first three couplets are from an old ballad, called the
Border Widow's Lament.]

'Alas,' thought Edward, 'is it thou? Poor helpless being, art thou alone
left, to gibber and moan, and fill with thy wild and unconnected scraps
of minstrelsy the halls that protected thee?' He then called, first low,
and then louder, 'Davie--Davie Gellatley!'

The poor simpleton showed himself from among the ruins of a sort of
greenhouse, that once