ant that he should have so readily taken advantage of
the misfortune of his kinsman, received him but ill. Indeed, a shot was
fired at the new proprietor by some unknown marksman in the gloaming,
which so frightened the heir that he fled at once to Stirling and had
the estate promptly advertised for sale.

"In addition to which," continued the old man, "though I bred him up
from a boy, he hath spoken much against me to the great folk of the
time, so that they have sent a company of soldiers down here to destroy
all that belongs to me, and to hunt his own blood-kin like a partridge
upon the mountains."

"Aye," cried Janet Gellatley, "and if it had not been for my poor Davie
there, they would have catched the partridge, too!"

Then with a true mother's pride Janet told the story of how the poor
innocent had saved his master. The Baron was compelled by the strictness
of the watch to hide, all day and most of the nights, in a cave high up
in a wooded glen.

"A comfortable place enough," the old woman explained; "for the goodman
of Corse-Cleugh has filled it with straw. But his Honour tires of it,
and he comes down here whiles for a warm at the fire, or at times a
sleep between the blankets. But once, when he was going back in the
dawn, two of the English soldiers got a glimpse of him as he was
slipping into the wood and banged off a gun at him. I was out on them
like a hawk, crying if they wanted to murder a poor woman's innocent
bairn! Whereupon they swore down my throat that they had seen 'the auld
rebel himself,' as they called the Baron. But my Davie, that some folk
take for a simpleton, being in the wood, caught up the old grey cloak
that his Honour had dropped to run the quicker, and came out from among
the trees as we were speaking, majoring and play-acting so like his
Honour that the soldier-men were clean beguiled, and even gave me
sixpence to say nothing about their having let off their gun at 'poor
crack-brained Sawney,' as they named my Davie!"

It was not till this long tale was ended that Waverley heard what he had
come so far to find out--that Rose was safe in the house of a Whig
Laird, an old friend of her father's, and that the Bailie, who had early
left the army of the Prince, was trying his best to save something out
of the wreck for her.

The next morning Edward went off to call on Bailie Macwheeble. At first
the man of law was not very pleased to see him, but when he learned that
Waverley meant t