do
justice to all men; I must therefore record, in justice to the drummer,
that he protested he could beat any known march or point of war known in
the British army, and had accordingly commenced with 'Dumbarton's Drums,'
when he was silenced by Gifted Gilfillan, the commander of the party, who
refused to permit his followers to move to this profane, and even, as he
said, persecutive tune, and commanded the drummer to beat the 119th
Psalm. As this was beyond the capacity of the drubber of sheepskin, he
was fain to have recourse to the inoffensive row-de-dow as a harmless
substitute for the sacred music which his instrument or skill were unable
to achieve. This may be held a trifling anecdote, but the drummer in
question was no less than town-drummer of Anderton. I remember his
successor in office, a member of that enlightened body, the British
Convention. Be his memory, therefore, treated with due respect.

CHAPTER VI

A VOLUNTEER SIXTY YEARS SINCE

On hearing the unwelcome sound of the drum, Major Melville hastily opened
a sashed door and stepped out upon a sort of terrace which divided his
house from the highroad from which the martial music proceeded. Waverley
and his new friend followed him, though probably he would have dispensed
with their attendance. They soon recognised in solemn march, first, the
performer upon the drum; secondly, a large flag of four compartments, on
which were inscribed the words, COVENANT, KIRK, KING, KINGDOMS. The
person who was honoured with this charge was followed by the commander of
the party, a thin, dark, rigid-looking man, about sixty years old. The
spiritual pride, which in mine host of the Candlestick mantled in a sort
of supercilious hypocrisy, was in this man's face elevated and yet
darkened by genuine and undoubting fanaticism. It was impossible to
behold him without imagination placing him in some strange crisis, where
religious zeal was the ruling principle. A martyr at the stake, a soldier
in the field, a lonely and banished wanderer consoled by the intensity
and supposed purity of his faith under every earthly privation, perhaps a
persecuting inquisitor, as terrific in power as unyielding in adversity;
any of these seemed congenial characters to this personage. With these
high traits of energy, there was something in the affected precision and
solemnity of his deportment and discourse that bordered upon the
ludicrous; so that, according to the mood of the spectator