’Fighting! pooh, what have you seen but a skirmish or two?  Ah! if you saw war on the grand scale—­sixty or a hundred thousand men in the field on each side!’

’I am not at all curious, Colonel.  “Enough,” says our homely proverb, “is as good as a feast.”  The plumed troops and the big war used to enchant me in poetry, but the night marches, vigils, couches under the wintry sky, and such accompaniments of the glorious trade, are not at all to my taste in practice; then for dry blows, I had my fill of fighting at Clifton, where I escaped by a hair’s-breadth half a dozen times; and you, I should think—­’ He stopped.

‘Had enough of it at Preston? you mean to say,’ answered the Colonel, laughing; ’but ‘tis my vocation, Hal.’

‘It is not mine, though,’ said Waverley; ’and having honourably got rid of the sword, which I drew only as a volunteer, I am quite satisfied with my military experience, and shall be in no hurry to take it up again.’

’I am very glad you are of that mind; but then what would you do in the north?’

’In the first place, there are some seaports on the eastern coast of Scotland still in the hands of the Chevalier’s friends; should I gain any of them, I can easily embark for the Continent.’

‘Good, your second reason?’

’Why, to speak the very truth, there is a person in Scotland upon whom I now find my happiness depends more than I was always aware, and about whose situation I am very anxious.’

’Then Emily was right, and there is a love affair in the case after all?  And which of these two pretty Scotchwomen, whom you insisted upon my admiring, is the distinguished fair? not Miss Glen—­I hope.’

‘No.’

’Ah, pass for the other; simplicity may be improved, but pride and conceit never.  Well, I don’t discourage you; I think it will please Sir Everard, from what he said when I jested with him about it; only I hope that intolerable papa, with his brogue, and his snuff, and his Latin, and his insufferable long stories about the Duke of Berwick, will find it necessary hereafter to be an inhabitant of foreign parts.  But as to the daughter, though I think you might find as fitting a match in England, yet if your heart be really set upon this Scotch rosebud, why the Baronet has a great opinion of her father and of his family, and he wishes much to see you married and settled, both for your own sake and for that of the three ermines passant, which may otherwise pass away altogether.  But I will bring you his mind fully upon the subject, since you are debarred correspondence for the present, for I think you will not be long in Scotland before me.’

’Indeed! and what can induce you to think of returning to Scotland?  No relenting longings towards the land of mountains and floods, I am afraid.’