tering into a vehement dispute upon
the price of hay with a farmer, who had reluctantly followed his laird
to the field, rather than give up his farm, whereof the lease had
just expired. Waverley was therefore once more consigned to silence,
foreseeing that further attempts at conversation with any of the party
would only give Balmawhapple a wished-for opportunity to display the
insolence of authority, and the sulky spite of a temper naturally
dogged, and rendered more so by habits of low indulgence and the incense
of servile adulation.

In about two hours' time, the party were near the Castle of Stirling,
over whose battlements the union flag was brightened as it waved in the
evening sun. To shorten his journey or perhaps to display his importance
and insult the English garrison, Balmawhapple, inclining to the right,
took his route through the royal park, which reaches to and surrounds
the rock upon which the fortress is situated.

With a mind more at ease, Waverley could not have failed to admire
the mixture of romance and beauty which renders interesting the scene
through which he was now passing--the field which had been the scene
of the tournaments of old--the rock from which the ladies beheld
the contest, while each made vows for the success of some favourite
knight--the towers of the Gothic church, where these vows might be
paid--and, surmounting all, the fortress itself, at once a castle and
palace, where valour received the prize from royalty, and knights and
dames closed the evening amid the revelry of the dance, the song,
and the feast. All these were objects fitted to arouse and interest a
romantic imagination.

But Waverley had other objects of meditation, and an incident soon
occurred of a nature to disturb meditation of any kind. Balmawhapple, in
the pride of his heart, as he wheeled his little body of cavalry round
the base of the castle, commanded his trumpet to sound a flourish,
and his standard to be displayed. This insult produced apparently
some sensation; for when the cavalcade was at such a distance from the
southern battery as to admit of a gun being depressed so as to bear upon
them, a flash of fire issued from one of the embrasures upon the rock;
and ere the report with which it was attended could be heard, the
rushing sound of a cannon-ball passed over Balmawhapple's head, and the
bullet, burying itself in the ground at a few yards' distance, covered
him with the earth which it drove up. Th