But without further tyranny over my readers, or display of the extent of my own reading, I shall content myself with borrowing a single incident from the memorable hunting at Lude, commemorated in the ingenious Mr. Gunn’s Essay on the Caledonian Harp, and so proceed in my story with all the brevity that my natural style of composition, partaking of what scholars call the periphrastic and ambagitory, and the vulgar the circumbendibus, will permit me.

The solemn hunting was delayed, from various causes, for about three weeks.  The interval was spent by Waverley with great satisfaction at Glennaquoich; for the impression which Flora had made on his mind at their first meeting grew daily stronger.  She was precisely the character to fascinate a youth of romantic imagination.  Her manners, her language, her talents for poetry and music, gave additional and varied influence to her eminent personal charms.  Even in her hours of gaiety, she was in his fancy exalted above the ordinary daughters of Eve, and seemed only to stoop for an instant to those topics of amusement and gallantry which others appear to live for.  In the neighbourhood of this enchantress, while sport consumed the morning, and music and the dance led on the hours of evening, Waverley became daily more delighted with his hospitable landlord, and more enamoured of his bewitching sister.

At length, the period fixed for the grand hunting arrived, and Waverley and the Chieftain departed for the place of rendezvous, which was a day’s journey to the northward of Glennaquoich.  Fergus was attended on this occasion by about three hundred of his clan, well armed, and accoutred in their best fashion.  Waverley complied so far with the custom of the country as to adopt the trews (he could not be reconciled to the kilt), brogues, and bonnet, as the fittest dress for the exercise in which he was to be engaged, and which least exposed him to be stared at as a stranger when they should reach the place of rendez-vous.  They found, on the spot appointed, several powerful Chiefs, to all of whom Waverley was formally presented, and by all cordially received.  Their vassals and clansmen, a part of whose feudal duty it was to attend on these parties, appeared in such numbers as amounted to a small army.  These active assistants spread through the country far and near, forming a circle, technically called the TINCHEL, which, gradually closing, drove the deer in herds together towards the glen where the Chiefs and principal sportsmen lay in wait for them.  In the meanwhile, these distinguished personages bivouacked among the flowery heath, wrapped up in their plaids; a mode of passing a summer’s night which Waverley found by no means unpleasant.