eyes elevated and
hands uplifted, announced that some extraordinary intelligence was
agitating the public mind of the municipality of Cairnvreckan. 'There is
some news,' said mine host of the Candlestick, pushing his lantern-jawed
visage and bare-boned nag rudely forward into the crowd--'there is some
news; and, if it please my Creator, I will forthwith obtain speirings
thereof.'

Waverley, with better regulated curiosity than his attendant's,
dismounted and gave his horse to a boy who stood idling near. It arose,
perhaps, from the shyness of his character in early youth, that he felt
dislike at applying to a stranger even for casual information, without
previously glancing at his physiognomy and appearance. While he looked
about in order to select the person with whom he would most willingly
hold communication, the buzz around saved him in some degree the trouble
of interrogatories. The names of Lochiel, Clanronald, Glengarry, and
other distinguished Highland Chiefs, among whom Vich Ian Vohr was
repeatedly mentioned, were as familiar in men's mouths as household
words; and from the alarm generally expressed, he easily conceived that
their descent into the Lowlands, at the head of their armed tribes, had
either already taken place or was instantly apprehended.

Ere Waverley could ask particulars, a strong, large-boned, hard-featured
woman, about forty, dressed as if her clothes had been flung on with a
pitchfork, her cheeks flushed with a scarlet red where they were not
smutted with soot and lamp-black, jostled through the crowd, and,
brandishing high a child of two years old, which she danced in her arms
without regard to its screams of terror, sang forth with all her might,--

Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling,
Charlie is my darling,
The young Chevalier!

'D' ye hear what's come ower ye now,' continued the virago, 'ye whingeing
Whig carles? D'ye hear wha's coming to cow yer cracks?
Little wot ye wha's coming,
Little wot ye wha's coming,
A' the wild Macraws are coming.'
The Vulcan of Cairnvreckan, who acknowledged his Venus in this exulting
Bacchante, regarded her with a grim and ire-foreboding countenance, while
some of the senators of the village hastened to interpose. 'Whisht,
gudewife; is this a time or is this a day to be singing your ranting fule
sangs in?--a time when the wine of wrath is poured out without mixture in
the cup of indignation, and a day when the land shou