her eminent personal charms. Even in her hours of gaiety, she was in
his fancy exalted above the ordinary daughters of Eve, and seemed only
to stoop for an instant to those topics of amusement and gallantry which
others appear to live for. In the neighbourhood of this enchantress,
while sport consumed the morning, and music and the dance led on
the hours of evening, Waverley became daily more delighted with his
hospitable landlord, and more enamoured of his bewitching sister.

At length, the period fixed for the grand hunting arrived, and Waverley
and the Chieftain departed for the place of rendezvous, which was a
day's journey to the northward of Glennaquoich. Fergus was attended
on this occasion by about three hundred of his clan, well armed, and
accoutred in their best fashion. Waverley complied so far with the
custom of the country as to adopt the trews (he could not be reconciled
to the kilt), brogues, and bonnet, as the fittest dress for the exercise
in which he was to be engaged, and which least exposed him to be stared
at as a stranger when they should reach the place of rendez-vous. They
found, on the spot appointed, several powerful Chiefs, to all of whom
Waverley was formally presented, and by all cordially received. Their
vassals and clansmen, a part of whose feudal duty it was to attend on
these parties, appeared in such numbers as amounted to a small army.
These active assistants spread through the country far and near, forming
a circle, technically called the TINCHEL, which, gradually closing,
drove the deer in herds together towards the glen where the Chiefs
and principal sportsmen lay in wait for them. In the meanwhile, these
distinguished personages bivouacked among the flowery heath, wrapped up
in their plaids; a mode of passing a summer's night which Waverley found
by no means unpleasant.

For many hours after sunrise, the mountain ridges and passes retained
their ordinary appearance of silence and solitude; and the Chiefs, with
their followers, amused themselves with various pastimes, in which the
joys of the shell, as Ossian has it, were not forgotten. 'Others apart
sat on a hill retired;' probably as deeply engaged in the discussion of
politics and news, as Milton's spirits in metaphysical disquisition.
At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard.
Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties
of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through cop