For well he knew the Baron’s wrath was deadly;

yet he set about to raise contributions and exactions upon the tenantry, and otherwise to turn the war to his own advantage.  Meanwhile he mounted the white cockade, and waited upon Rose with a pretext of great devotion for the service in which her father was engaged, and many apologies for the freedom he must necessarily use for the support of his people.  It was at this moment that Rose learned, by open-mouthed fame, with all sorts of exaggeration, that Waverley had killed the smith of Cairnvreckan, in an attempt to arrest him; had been cast into a dungeon by Major Melville of Cairnvreckan, and was to be executed by martial law within three days.  In the agony which these tidings excited, she proposed to Donald Bean the rescue of the prisoner.  It was the very sort of service which he was desirous to undertake, judging it might constitute a merit of such a nature as would make amends for any peccadilloes which he might be guilty of in the country.  He had the art, however, pleading all the while duty and discipline, to hold off, until poor Rose, in the extremity of her distress, offered to bribe him to the enterprise with some valuable jewels which had been her mother’s.

Donald Bean, who had served in France, knew, and perhaps over-estimated, the value of these trinkets.  But he also perceived Rose’s apprehensions of its being discovered that she had parted with her jewels for Waverley’s liberation.  Resolved this scruple should not part him and the treasure, he voluntarily offered to take an oath that he would never mention Miss Rose’s share in the transaction; and foreseeing convenience in keeping the oath, and no probable advantage in breaking it, he took the engagement—­in order, as he told his lieutenant, to deal handsomely by the young lady—­in the only form and mode which, by a mental paction with himself, he considered as binding—­he swore secrecy upon his drawn dirk.  He was the more especially moved to this act of good faith by some attentions that Miss Bradwardine showed to his daughter Alice, which, while they gained the heart of the mountain damsel, highly gratified the pride of her father.  Alice, who could now speak a little English, was very communicative in return for Rose’s kindness, readily confided to her the whole papers respecting the intrigue with Gardiner’s regiment, of which she was the depositary, and as readily undertook, at her instance, to restore them to Waverley without her father’s knowledge.  ’For they may oblige the bonnie young lady and the handsome young gentleman,’ said Alice, ‘and what use has my father for a whin bits o’ scarted paper?’

The reader is aware that she took an opportunity of executing this purpose on the eve of Waverley’s leaving the glen.