Of this he took a copious dram, observing he had already taken his morning with Donald Bean Lean, before his departure; he offered the same cordial to Alice and to Edward, which they both declined.  With the bounteous air of a lord, Evan then proffered the scallop to Dugald Mahony, his attendant, who, without waiting to be asked a second time, drank it off with great gusto.  Evan then prepared to move towards the boat, inviting Waverley to attend him.  Meanwhile, Alice had made up in a small basket what she thought worth removing, and hinging her plaid around her, she advanced up to Edward, and, with the utmost simplicity, taking hold of his hand, offered her cheek to his salute, dropping, at the same time, her little curtsy.  Evan, who was esteemed a wag among the mountain fair, advanced, as if to secure a similar favour; but Alice, snatching up her basket, escaped up the rocky bank as fleetly as a roe, and, turning round and laughing, called something out to him in Gaelic, which he answered in the same tone and language; then, waving her hand to Edward, she resumed her road, and was soon lost among the thickets, though they continued for some time to hear her lively carol, as she proceeded gaily on her solitary journey.

They now again entered the gorge of the cavern, and stepping into the boat, the Highlander pushed off, and, taking advantage of the morning breeze, hoisted a clumsy sort of sail, while Evan assumed the helm, directing their course, as it appeared to Waverley, rather higher up the lake than towards the place of his embarkation on the preceding night.  As they glided along the silver mirror, Evan opened the conversation with a panegyric upon Alice, who, he said, was both canny and FENDY; and was, to the boot of all that, the best dancer of a strathspey in the whole strath.  Edward assented to her praises so far as he understood them, yet could not help regretting that she was condemned to such a perilous and dismal life.

‘Oich! for that,’ said Evan, ’there is nothing in Perthshire that she need want, if she ask her father to fetch it, unless it be too hot or too heavy.

‘But to be the daughter of a cattle-stealer—­a common thief!’

’Common thief!—­no such thing:  Donald Bean Lean never lifted less than a drove in his life.’

‘Do you call him an uncommon thief, then?’

’No—­he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cottar, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird, is a gentleman-drover.  And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.’

‘But what can this end in, were he taken in such an appropriation?’

’To be sure he would die for the law, as many a pretty man has done before him.’

‘Die for the law!’

’Aye; that is, with the law, or by the law; be strapped up on the kind gallows of Crieff, [12] where his father died, and his goodsire died, and where I hope he’ll live to die himself, if he’s not shot, or slashed, in a creagh.’