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 an act of self-defence. The unfortunate man fell; and while
Edward, thrilled with a natural horror at the incident, neither had
presence of mind to unsheathe his sword nor to draw his remaining pistol,
the populace threw themselves upon him, disarmed him, and were about to
use him with great violence, when the appearance of a venerable
clergyman, the pastor of the parish, put a curb on 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 befell 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 evangelical 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.

[Footnote: The Reverend John Erskine, D. D, an eminent Scottish divine
and a most excellent man, headed the Evangelical party in the Church of
Scotland at the time when the celebrated Doctor Robertson, the historian,
was the leader of the Moderate party. These two distinguished persons
were colleagues in the Old Grey Friar