Upon a ranting Highlandman.'

This canticle, which excited a suppressed titter among the younger part
of the audience, totally overcame the patience of the taunted man of the
anvil. 'Deil be in me but I'll put this het gad down her throat!' cried
he, in an ecstasy of wrath, snatching a bar from the forge; and he might
have executed his threat, had he not been withheld by a part of the mob;
while the rest endeavoured to force the termagant out of his presence.

Waverley meditated a retreat in the confusion, but his horse was nowhere
to be seen. At length he observed, at some distance, his faithful
attendant, Ebenezer, who, as soon as he had perceived the turn matters
were likely to take, had withdrawn both horses from the press, and,
mounted on the one, and holding the other, answered the loud and
repeated calls of Waverley for his horse--'Na, na! if ye are nae friend
to kirk and the king, and are detained as siccan a person, ye maun
answer to honest men of the country for breach of contract; and I maun
keep the naig and the walise for damage and expense, in respect my
horse and mysell will lose to-morrow's day's-wark, besides the afternoon
preaching.'

Edward, out of patience, hemmed in and hustled by the rabble on every
side, and every moment expecting personal violence, resolved to
try measures of intimidation, and at length drew a pocket-pistol,
threatening, on the one 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