'We part not here!' said Waverley.

'Oh yes, we do; you must come no farther. Not that I fear what is to
follow for myself,' he said proudly: 'Nature has her tortures as well as
art; and how happy should we think the man who escapes from the throes
of a mortal and painful disorder, in the space of a short half hour? And
this matter, spin it out as they will, cannot last longer, But what
a dying man can suffer firmly, may kill a living friend to look
upon.--This same law of high treason,' he continued, with astonishing
firmness and composure, 'is one of the blessings, Edward, with
which your free country has accommodated poor old Scotland: her own
jurisprudence, as I have heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day
or other--when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by
its tender mercies--they will blot it from their records, as levelling
them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the
senseless head--they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper
coronet; there would be some satire in that, Edward. I hope they will
set it on the Scotch gate though, that I may look, even after death,
to the blue hills of my own country, which I love so dearly. The Baron
would have added,

MORITUR, ET MORIENS DULCES REMINISCITUR ARGOS.'

A bustle, and the sound of wheels and horses' feet, was now heard in the
courtyard of the Castle. 'As I have told you why you must not follow me,
and these sounds admonish me that my time flies fast, tell me how you
found poor Flora?'

Waverley, with a voice interrupted by suffocating sensations, gave some
account of the state of her mind.

'Poor Flora!' answered the Chief, 'she could have borne her own sentence
of death, but not mine. You, Waverley, will soon know the happiness of
mutual affection in the married state--long, long may Rose and you enjoy
it!--but you can never know the purity of feeling which combines two
orphans, like Flora and me, left alone as it were in the world, and
being all in all to each other from our very infancy. But her strong
sense of duty, and predominant feeling of loyalty, will give new nerve
to her mind after the immediate and acute sensation of this parting has
passed away. She will then think of Fergus as of the heroes of our race,
upon whose deeds she loved to dwell.'

'Shall she not see you, then?' asked Waverley. 'She seemed to expect
it.'

'A necessary deceit will spare her the last dreadful parting. I could
not part wi