The metamorphosed horse-dealer was silenced, of course, and slunk to the rear, where he consoled himself by entering 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 farther 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 brightening 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 a 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 subjects 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 around 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 distance from the southern battery as to admit a gun being so much depressed as to bear upon them, a flash of fire issued from one of the embrazures 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. There was no need to bid the party trudge. In fact, every man acting upon the impulse of the moment, Mr Jinker's steeds were soon brought to shew their mettle, and the cavaliers retreating with more speed than regularity, never took to a trot, as the lieutenant afterwards observed, until an intervening eminence had secured them from

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any repetition of so undesirable a compli ment on the part of Stirling Castle. I must do Balmawhapple, however, the justice to say, that he not only kept the rear of his troop, and laboured to maintain some order among them, but in the height of his gallantry answered the fire of the castle by discharging one of his horse-pis tols at the battlements; although, the dis tance being nearly half a mile, I could ne ver learn that this measure of retaliation was attended with any particular effect.

The travellers now passed the memora ble field of Bannockburn, and reached the Torwood, a place glorious or terrible to the recollections of the Scottish peasant, as the feats of Wallace, or the cruelties of Wude Willie Grime, predominate in his recollection. At Falkirk, a town formerly famous in Scottish history, and soon to be again distinguished as the scene of military events of importance, Balmawhapple proposed to halt and repose for the evening. This was performed with very little

regard to military discipline, as his worthy quarter-master was chiefly solicitous to discover where the best brandy might be come at. Sentinels were deemed unne cessary, and the only vigils performed were those of such of the party as could procure liquor. A few resolute men might easily have cut off the detachment; but of the inhabitants some were favourable, many indifferent, and the rest overawed. So nothing memorable occurred in the course of the evening, excepting that Wa verley's rest was sorely interrupted by the revellers hallooing forth their Jacobite songs, without remorse or mitigation of voice.

Early in the morning they were again mounted, and on the road to Edinburgh, though the pallid visages of some of the troop betrayed that they had spent a night of sleepless debauchery. They halted at Linlithgow, distinguished by its ancient palace, which, Sixty Years since, was entire and habitable, but the venerable