‘Friend,’ said Gilfillan, with a more complacent voice than he had hitherto used, ’honour not me.  I do not go out to park-dikes, and to steadings, and to market-towns, to have herds and cottars and burghers pull off their bonnets to me as they do to Major Melville o’ Cairnvreckan, and ca’ me laird, or captain, or honour;—­no; my sma’ means, whilk are not aboon twenty thousand merk, have had the blessing of increase, but the pride of heart has not increased with them; nor do I delight to be called captain, though I have the subscribed commission of that gospel-searching nobleman, the Earl of Glencairn, in whilk I am so designated.  While I live, I am and will be called Habakkuk Gilfillan, who will stand up for the standards of doctrine agreed on by the ance-famous Kirk of Scotland, before she trafficked with the accursed Achan, while he has a plack in his purse, or a drap o’ bluid in his body.’

‘Ah,’ said the pedlar, ’I have seen your land about Mauchlin—­a fertile spot! your lines have fallen in pleasant places!—­And siccan a breed o’ cattle is not in ony laird’s land in Scotland.’

‘Ye say right,—­ye say right, friend,’ retorted Gilfillan eagerly, for he was not inaccessible to flattery upon this subject,—­’ye say right; they are the real Lancashire, and there’s no the like o’ them even at the Mains of Kilmaurs;’ and he then entered into a discussion of their excellences, to which our readers will probably be as indifferent as our hero.  After this excursion, the leader returned to his theological discussions, while the pedlar, less profound upon those mystic points, contented himself with groaning, and expressing his edification at suitable intervals.

’What a blessing it would be to the puir blinded popish nations among whom I hae sojourned, to have siccan a light to their paths!  I hae been as far as Muscovia in my sma’ trading way, as a travelling merchant; and I hae been through France, and the Low Countries, and a’ Poland, and maist feck o’ Germany; and oh! it would grieve your honour’s soul to see the murmuring, and the singing, and massing, that’s in the kirk, and the piping that’s in the quire, and the heathenish dancing and dicing upon the Sabbath!’

This set Gilfillan off upon the Book of Sports and the Covenant, and the Engagers, and the Protesters, and the Whiggamore’s Raid, and the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, and the Longer and Shorter Catechism, and the Excommunication at Torwood, and the slaughter of Archbishop Sharp.  This last topic, again, led him into the lawfulness of defensive arms, on which subject he uttered much more sense than could have been expected from some other parts of his harangue, and attracted even Waverley’s attention, who had hitherto been lost in his own sad reflections.  Mr. Gilfillan then considered the lawfulness of a private man’s standing forth as the avenger of public oppression, and as he was labouring with great earnestness the cause of Mas James Mitchell, who fired at the Archbishop of St. Andrews some years before the prelate’s assassination on Magus Muir, an incident occurred which interrupted his harangue.