f high treason,' he continued, with astonishing firmness and
composure, 'is one of the blessings, Edward, with which your free country
has accommodated poor old Scotland; her own jurisprudence, as I have
heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day or other--when there are no
longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by its tender mercies--they will
blot it from their records as levelling them with a nation of cannibals.
The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless head--they have not the wit
to grace mine with a paper coronet; there would be some satire in that,
Edward. I hope they will set it on the Scotch gate though, that I may
look, even after death, to the blue hills of my own country, which I love
so dearly. The Baron would have added,

Moritur, et moriens dukes reminiscitur Argos.'

A bustle, and the sound of wheels and horses' feet, was now heard in the
court-yard of the Castle. 'As I have told you why you must not follow me,
and these sounds admonish me that my time flies fast, tell me how you
found poor Flora.'

Waverley, with a voice interrupted by suffocating sensations, gave some
account of the state of her mind.

'Poor Flora!' answered the Chief, 'she could have borne her own sentence
of death, but not mine. You, Waverley, will soon know the happiness of
mutual affection in the married state--long, long may Rose and you enjoy
it!--but you can never know the purity of feeling which combines two
orphans like Flora and me, left alone as it were in the world, and being
all in all to each other from our very infancy. But her strong sense of
duty and predominant feeling of loyalty will give new nerve to her mind
after the immediate and acute sensation of this parting has passed away.
She will then think of Fergus as of the heroes of our race, upon whose
deeds she loved to dwell.'

'Shall she not see you then?' asked Waverley. 'She seemed to expect it.'

'A necessary deceit will spare her the last dreadful parting. I could not
part with her without tears, and I cannot bear that these men should
think they have power to extort them. She was made to believe she would
see me at a later hour, and this letter, which my confessor will deliver,
will apprise her that all is over.'

An officer now appeared and intimated that the High Sheriff and his
attendants waited before the gate of the Castle to claim the bodies of
Fergus Mac-Ivor and Evan Maccombich. 'I come,' said Fergus. Accordingly,
supporting Edward by t