treasonable works, of which the manuscripts were found among your baggage?"

"But of which, I give you my honour as a gentleman, I never read six pages." "I am not your judge, Mr Waverley; your examination will be transmitted elsewhere. And now to proceed-Do you know a person that passes by the name of Wily Will, or Will Ruthven ?"

"I never heard of such a name till this moment.'

"Did you never through such a person, or any other person, communicate with Serjeant Humphry Houghton, instigating him to desert, with as many of his com rades as he could seduce to join him, and unite with the Highlanders and other rebels now in arms, under the command of the young Pretender?"

"I assure you I am not only entirely guiltless of the plot you have laid to my charge, but I detest it from the very bottom of my soul, nor would I be guilty of such a treachery to gain a throne, either for myself or any other man alive."

"Yet when I consider this envelope, in the hand of one of those misguided gentlemen who are now in arms against this country, and the verses which it inclosed, I cannot but find some analogy between the enterprize I have mentioned and the exploit of Wogan, which the writer seems to expect you should imitate.'

Waverley was struck with the coincidence, but denied that the wishes or expectations of the letter-writer were to be regarded as proofs of a charge otherwise chimerical.

"But, if I am rightly informed, your time was spent, during your absence from the regiment, between the house of this Highland Chieftain, and that of Mr Bradwardine of Bradwardine, also in arms for this unfortunate cause ?"

"I do not mean to disguise it; but I do deny, most resolutely, being privy to any of their designs against the government."

"You do not, however, I presume, intend to deny, that you attended your host

Glennaquoich to a rendezvous, where, under pretence of a general hunting-match, most of the accomplices of his treason were assembled, to concert measures for taking arms?eter om line is

-་་་

"I acknowledge having been at such a meeting; but I neither heard nor saw any thing which could give it the character you affix to it."

"From thence you proceeded, with Glennaquoich and a part of his clan, to join the army of the young Pretender, and returned, after having paid your homage to him, to discipline and arm the remainder, and unite them to his bands on their way southward ?

* I never went with Glennaquoich on such an errand. I never so much as heard that the whom person mention was in the country."

you

He then detailed the history of his misfortune at the hunting-mateh, and added, that on his return he found himself suddenly deprived of his commission, and did

not deny that he then, for the first time, observed symptoms which indicated a disposition in the Highlanders to take arms; but added, that having no inclination to join their cause, and no longer any reason for remaining in Scotland, he was now on his return to his native country, to which he had been summoned by those who had a right to direct his motions, as Major Melville would perceive from the letters on the table.

Major Melville accordingly perused the letters of Richard Waverley, of Sir Everard, and of Aunt Rachael, but the inferences he drew from them were different from what Waverley expected. They held the language of discontent with government, threw out no obscure hints of revenge, and that of poor Aunt Rachael, which plainly asserted the justice of the Stuart cause, was held to contain the open avowal of what the others only ventured to intimate,

"Permit me another question, Mr Waverley. Did you not receive repeated let. ters from your commanding officer, warn ing you and commanding you to return to your post, and acquainting you with the use made of your name to spread discontent through your soldiers?"

"I never did, Major Melville. One letter, indeed, I received from him, containing a civil intimation of his wish that I would employ my leave of absence otherwise, than in constant residence at Bradwardine, as to which, I own, I thought he was not called upon to interfere; and, finally, I had, on the same day in which I observed, myself superseded in the Gazette, a second letter from Colonel G, commanding me to join the regiment, an order which, owing to my absence, already mentioned and accounted for, I received too late to be obeyed. If there were any intermediate letters, and certainly from Colonel G's high character I think it probable, they have never reached me."