The Baron, meanwhile, paced the room in silent indignation, and at length fixing his eye upon an old portrait, whose person was clad in armour, and whose features glared grimly out of a huge bush of hair, part of which descended from his head to his shoulders, and part from his chin and upper-lip to his breastplate,—­’That gentleman, Captain Waverley, my grandsire,’ he said, ’with two hundred horse, whom he levied within his own bounds, discomfited and put to the rout more than five hundred of these Highland reivers, who have been ever lapis OFFENSIONIS, et Petra SCANDALI, a stumbling-block and a rock of offence to the Lowland vicinage—­he discomfited them, I say, when they had the temerity to descend to harry this country, in the time of the civil dissensions, in the year of grace sixteen hundred forty and two.  And now, sir, I, his grandson, am thus used at such unworthy hands!’

Here there was an awful pause; after which all the company, as is usual in cases of difficulty, began to give separate and inconsistent counsel.  Alexander ab Alexandro proposed they should send some one to compound with the Caterans, who would readily, he said, give up their prey for a dollar a head.  The Bailie opined that this transaction would amount to theft-boot, or composition of felony; and he recommended that some canny hand should be sent up to the glens to make the best bargain he could, as it were for himself, so that the laird might not be seen in such a transaction.  Edward proposed to send off to the nearest garrison for a party of soldiers and a magistrate’s warrant; and Rose, as far as she dared, endeavoured to insinuate the course of paying the arrears of tribute money to Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr, who, they all knew, could easily procure restoration of the cattle, if he were properly propitiated.

None of these proposals met the Baron’s approbation.  The idea of composition, direct or implied, was absolutely ignominious; that of Waverley only showed that he did not understand the state of the country, and of the political parties which divided it; and, standing matters as they did with Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr, the Baron would make no concession to him, were it, he said, to procure restitution in INTEGRUM of every stirk and stot that the chief, his forefathers, and his clan, had stolen since the days of Malcolm Canmore.’

In fact, his voice was still for war, and he proposed to send expresses to Balmawhapple, Killancureit, Tulliellum, and other lairds, who were exposed to similar depredations, inviting them to join in the pursuit; ’and then, sir, shall these NEBULONES NEQUISSIMI, as Leslaeus calls them, be brought to the fate of their predecessor Cacus,

     Elisos oculos, et siccum sanguine guttur.’

The Bailie, who by no means relished these warlike counsels, here pulled forth an immense watch, of the colour, and nearly of the size, of a pewter warming-pan, and observed it was now past noon, and that the Caterans had been seen in the pass of Bally-Brough soon after sunrise; so that before the allied forces could assemble, they and their prey would be far beyond the reach of the most active pursuit, and sheltered in those pathless deserts where it was neither advisable to follow, nor indeed possible to trace them.