Much nearer to the mouth of the cave he heard the notes of a lively Gaelic song, guided by which, in a sunny recess, shaded by a glittering birch-tree, and carpeted with a bank of firm white sand, he found the damsel of the cavern, whose lay had already reached him, busy, to the best of her power, in arranging to advantage a morning repast of milk, eggs, barley-bread, fresh butter, and honey-comb.  The poor girl had already made a circuit of four miles that morning in search of the eggs, of the meal which baked her cakes, and of the other materials of the breakfast, being all delicacies which she had to beg or borrow from distant cottagers.  The followers of Donald Bean Lean used little food except the flesh of the animals which they drove away from the Lowlands; bread itself was a delicacy seldom thought of, because hard to be obtained, and all the domestic accommodations of milk, poultry, butter, etc., were out of the question in this Scythian camp.  Yet it must not be omitted that, although Alice had occupied a part of the morning 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.