‘Poor young gentleman!’ said the Colonel ’I suppose he begins to feel the difficulties of his situation.  Well, dear Waverley, this is more than kind, and shall not be forgotten while Philip Talbot can remember anything.  My life—­pshaw—­let Emily thank you for that—­this is a favour worth fifty lives.  I cannot hesitate on giving my parole in the circumstances:  there it is—­(he wrote it out in form)—­and now, how am I to get off?’

’All that is settled:  your baggage is packed, my horses wait, and a boat has been engaged, by the Prince’s permission, to put you on board the Fox frigate.  I sent a messenger down to Leith on purpose.’

’That will do excellently well.  Captain Beaver is my particular friend:  he will put me ashore at Berwick or Shields, from whence I can ride post to London;—­and you must entrust me with the packet of papers which you recovered by means of your Miss Bean Lean.  I may have an opportunity of using them to your advantage.—­But I see your Highland friend, Glen—­what do you call his barbarous name? and his orderly with him—­I must not call him his orderly cut-throat any more, I suppose.  See how he walks as if the world were his own, with the bonnet on one side of his head, and his plaid puffed out across his breast!  I should like now to meet that youth where my hands were not tied:  I would tame his pride, or he should tame mine,’

’For shame, Colonel Talbot! you swell at sight of tartan, as the bull is said to do at scarlet.  You and Mac-Ivor have some points not much unlike, so far as national prejudice is concerned.’

The latter part of this discourse took place in the street.  They passed the Chief, the Colonel and he sternly and punctiliously greeting each other, like two duellists before they take their ground.  It was evident the dislike was mutual.  ’I never see that surly fellow that dogs his heels,’ said the Colonel, after he had mounted his horse, ’but he reminds me of lines I have somewhere heard—­upon the stage, I think: 

     —­Close behind him
     Stalks sullen Bertram, like a sorcerer’s fiend,
     Pressing to be employed.’

‘I assure you, Colonel,’ said Waverley,’ that you judge too harshly of the Highlanders.’

’Not a whit, not a whit; I cannot spare them a jot—­I cannot bate them an ace.  Let them stay in their own barren mountains, and puff and swell, and hang their bonnets on the horns of the moon, if they have a mind; but what business have they to come where people wear breeches, and speak an intelligible language?  I mean intelligible in comparison with their gibberish, for even the Lowlanders talk a kind of English little better than the negroes in Jamaica.  I could pity the Pr—­, I mean the Chevalier himself, for having so many desperadoes about him.  And they learn their trade so early.  There is a kind of subaltern imp, for example, a sort of sucking devil, whom your friend Glenna—­Glennamuck there, has sometimes in his train.  To look at