l precautions.

When these sounds had died upon the silence of the night, the
Highlanders began their march swiftly, yet with the most cautious
silence. Waverley had little time, or indeed disposition, for
observation, and could only discern that; they passed at some distance
from a large building, in the windows of which a light or two yet seemed
to twinkle. A little farther on, the leading Highlander snuffed the wind
like a setting spaniel, and then made a signal to his party again to
halt. He stooped down upon all-fours, wrapped up in his plaid, so as to
be scarce distinguishable from the heathy ground on which he moved, and
advanced in this posture to reconnoitre. In a short time he returned,
and dismissed his attendants excepting one; and, intimating to Waverley
that he must imitate his cautious mode of proceeding, all three crept
forward on hands and knees.

After proceeding a greater way in this inconvenient manner than was at
all comfortable to his knees and shins, Waverley perceived the smell
of smoke, which probably had been much sooner distinguished by the more
acute nasal organs of his guide. It proceeded from the corner of a low
and ruinous sheepfold, the walls of which were made of loose stones,
as is usual in Scotland. Close by this low wall the Highlander guided
Waverley, and, in order probably to make him sensible of his danger, or
perhaps to obtain the full credit of his own dexterity, he intimated
to him, by sign and example, that he might raise his head so as to peep
into the sheepfold. Waverley did so, and beheld an outpost of four or
five soldiers lying by their watch-fire. They were all asleep, except
the sentinel, who paced backwards and forwards with his firelock on his
shoulder, which glanced red in the light of the fire as he crossed and
recrossed before it in his short walk, casting his eye frequently to
that part of the heavens from which the moon, hitherto obscured by mist,
seemed now about to make her appearance,

In the course of a minute or two, by one of those sudden changes of
atmosphere incident to a mountainous country, a breeze arose, and swept
before it the clouds which had covered the horizon, and the night planet
poured her full effulgence upon a wide and blighted heath, skirted
indeed with copsewood and stunted trees in the quarter from which they
had come, but open and bare to the observation of the sentinel in
that to which their course tended. The wall of the sheepfold, ind