’Devoutly prayed, my dear and prophetic sister, and the best way in the world to close a dubious argument.—­But hear ye not the pipes, Captain Waverley?  Perhaps you will like better to dance to them in the hall, than to be deafened with their harmony without taking part in the exercise they invite us to.’

Waverley took Flora’s hand.  The dance, song, and merry-making proceeded, and closed the day’s entertainment at the castle of Vich Ian Vohr.  Edward at length retired, his mind agitated by a variety of new and conflicting feelings, which detained him from rest for some time, in that not unpleasing state of mind in which fancy takes the helm, and the soul rather drifts passively along with the rapid and confused tide of reflections, than exerts itself to encounter, systematize, or examine them.  At a late hour he fell asleep, and dreamed of Flora Mac-Ivor.

CHAPTER XXIV

A STAG-HUNT, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Shall this be a long or a short chapter?—­This is a question in which you, gentle reader, have no vote, however much you may be interested in the consequences; just as you may (like myself) probably have nothing to do with the imposing a new tax, excepting the trifling circumstance of being obliged to pay it.  More happy surely in the present case, since, though it lies within my arbitrary power to extend my materials as I think proper, I cannot call you into Exchequer if you do not think proper to read my narrative.  Let me therefore consider.  It is true, that the annals and documents in my hands say but little of this Highland chase; but then I can find copious materials for description elsewhere.  There is old Lindsay of Pitscottie ready at my elbow, with his Athole hunting, and his ’lofted and joisted palace of green timber; with all kind of drink to be had in burgh and land, as ale, beer, wine, muscadel, malvaise, hippocras, and aquavitae; with wheat-bread, main-bread, ginge-bread, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge, plover, duck, drake, brissel-cock, pawnies, black-cock, muir-fowl, and capercailzies;’ not forgetting the ‘costly bedding, vaiselle, and napry,’ and least of all the ’excelling stewards, cunning barters, excellent cooks, and pottingars, with confections and drugs for the desserts.’  Besides the particulars which may be thence gleaned for this Highland feast (the splendour of which induced the Pope’s legate to dissent from an opinion which he had hitherto held, that Scotland, namely, was the—­the—­the latter end of the world)—­besides these, might I not illuminate my pages with Taylor the Water Poet’s hunting in the braes of Mar, where,

     Through heather, mosse, ’mong frogs, and bogs, and fogs,
     ’Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-battered hills,
     Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs,
     Where two hours’ hunting fourscore fat deer kills. 
     Lowland, your sports are low as is your seat;
     The Highland games and minds are high and great.