in providing those accommodations for her guest which the cavern did not afford, she had secured time also to arrange her own person in her best trim.  Her finery was very simple.  A short russet-coloured jacket, and a petticoat, of scanty longitude, was her whole dress; but these were clean, and neatly arranged.  A piece of scarlet embroidered cloth, called the snood, confined her hair, which fell over it in a profusion of rich dark curls.  The scarlet plaid, which formed part of her dress, was laid aside, that it might not impede her activity in attending the stranger.  I should forget Alice’s proudest ornament, were I to omit mentioning a pair of gold ear-rings, and a golden rosary, which her father (for she was the daughter of Donald Bean Lean) had brought from France, the plunder, probably, of some battle or storm.

Her form, though rather large for her years, was very well proportioned, and her demeanour had a natural and rustic grace, with nothing of the sheepishness of an ordinary peasant.  The smiles, displaying a row of teeth of exquisite whiteness, and the laughing eyes, with which, in dumb show, she gave Waverley that morning greeting which she wanted English words to express, might have been interpreted by a coxcomb, or perhaps by a young soldier, who, without being such, was conscious of a handsome person, as meant to convey more than the courtesy of an hostess.  Nor do I take it upon me to say, that the little wild mountaineer would have welcomed any staid old gentleman advanced in life, the Baron of Bradwardine, for example, with the cheerful pains which she bestowed upon Edward’s accommodation.  She seemed eager to place him by the meal which she had so sedulously arranged, and to which she now added a few bunches of cranberries, gathered in an adjacent morass.  Having had the satisfaction of seeing him seated at his breakfast, she placed herself demurely upon a stone at a few yards’ distance, and appeared to watch with great complacency for some opportunity of serving him.

Evan and his attendant now returned slowly along the beach, the latter bearing a large salmon-trout, the produce of the morning’s sport, together with the angling-rod, while Evan strolled forward, with an easy, self-satisfied, and important gait, towards the spot where Waverley was so agreeably employed at the breakfast-table.  After morning greetings had passed on both sides, and Evan, looking at Waverley, had said something in Gaelic to Alice, which made her laugh, yet colour up to her eyes, through a complexion well embrowned by sun and wind, Evan intimated his commands that the fish should be prepared for breakfast.  A spark from the lock of his pistol produced a light, and a few withered fir branches were quickly in flame, and as speedily reduced to hot embers, on which the trout was broiled in large slices.  To crown the repast, Evan produced from the pocket of his short jerkin, a large scallop shell, and from under the folds of his plaid, a ram’s horn full of whisky.