om, upon
his return. The dog, no doubt fatigued with his excursion, had stretched
himself out in a corner of the room, where various articles tending to
his comfort lay disposed. He had remained, until tired of his confinement
he had risen, and fumbling about had thrown down an ancient heavy shield,
which produced the first cause of alarm, no less to himself than to the
household. The moon shining through the window had attracted his
attention, and he began to bay, as dogs sometimes will. The sudden
fright, and the distance of the gun-room from the family apartment,
served to modify the intonation, and in his confusion of mind Mr.
Featherston failed to recognize his voice. "Indeed," said he, "I never
knew the whelp to bay before."

As time wore on, and the story had often been told by him, it lost none
of its original features, except, perhaps, the remembrance of his own
agitation. But the fright of the family and his domestics, the assent of
the priest to their superstitious fears, and the mortal terror which
overwhelmed them, when out bounded the shaggy black monster of a dog and
in an instant was pawing them all round, in his ecstasy of escape, and
whatever else was ludicrous in the adventure, was oftentimes related by
the 'Squire, with all the aid it could derive from a somewhat lively
imagination and considerable power of native eloquence.

And now, if I have only invented this story of "Old Grouse in the
Gun-room," for the entertainment of my readers, I have at least attached
a tale, which may be thought to have some plausibility, to a famous
title, which has run through the world, for so many years, without any
tale at all.

CHAPTER VIII.

In a note at the end of Chapter V. of "Waverley," Sir Walter Scott
remarks:--"These introductory chapters have been a good deal censured as
tedious and unnecessary. Yet there are circumstances recorded in them
which the author has not been able to persuade himself to retract or
cancel." So if, in giving certain loose hints rather than sketches of
characters and manners in a very interesting town, ardently beloved by
all who have ever had any near connection with it, during a former
generation of its inhabitants, I should be thought to have set down too
many "unconsidered trifles," I can only shelter myself under the shadow
of his great name, and plead that I had not the heart to leave them out,
as they occurred to my memory while writing; and however they may lack,