I must not
call him his orderly cut-throat any more, I suppose. See how he walks as
if the world were his own, with the bonnet on one side of his head and
his plaid puffed out across his breast! I should like now to meet that
youth where my hands were not tied: I would tame his pride, or he should
tame mine.'

'For shame, Colonel Talbot! you swell at sight of tartan as the bull is
said to do at scarlet. You and Mac-Ivor have some points not much unlike,
so far as national prejudice is concerned.'

The latter part of this discourse took place in the street. They passed
the Chief, the Colonel and he sternly and punctiliously greeting each
other, like two duellists before they take their ground. It was evident
the dislike was mutual. 'I never see that surly fellow that dogs his
heels,' said the Colonel, after he had mounted his horse, 'but he reminds
me of lines I have somewhere heard--upon the stage, I think:--

Close behind him
Stalks sullen Bertram, like a sorcerer's fiend,
Pressing to be employed.

'I assure you, Colonel,' said Waverley, 'that you judge too harshly of the
Highlanders.'

'Not a whit, not a whit; I cannot spare them a jot; I cannot bate them an
ace. Let them stay in their own barren mountains, and puff and swell, and
hang their bonnets on the horns of the moon, if they have a mind; but
what business have they to come where people wear breeches, and speak an
intelligible language? I mean intelligible in comparison to their
gibberish, for even the Lowlanders talk a kind of English little better
than the Negroes in Jamaica. I could pity the Pr----, I mean the,
Chevalier himself, for having so many desperadoes about him. And they
learn their trade so early. There is a kind of subaltern imp, for
example, a sort of sucking devil, whom your friend Glena----Glenamuck
there, has sometimes in his train. To look at him, he is about fifteen
years; but he is a century old in mischief and villainy. He was playing
at quoits the other day in the court; a gentleman, a decent-looking
person enough, came past, and as a quoit hit his shin, he lifted his
cane; but my young bravo whips out his pistol, like Beau Clincher in the
"Trip to the Jubilee," and had not a scream of Gardez l'eau from an upper
window set all parties a-scampering for fear of the inevitable
consequences, the poor gentleman would have lost his life by the hands of
that little cockatrice.'

'A fine character you'll give of Scotland upon