‘How,’ answered Edward, ’can you advise me to desert the expedition in which we are all embarked?’

‘Embarked?’ said Fergus; ’the vessel is going to pieces, and it is full time for all who can to get into the long-boat and leave her.’

‘Why, what will other gentlemen do?’ answered Waverley, ’and why did the Highland Chiefs consent to this retreat if it is so ruinous?’

‘O,’ replied Mac-Ivor, ’they think that, as on former occasions, the heading, hanging, and forfeiting will chiefly fall to the lot of the Lowland gentry; that they will be left secure in their poverty and their fastnesses, there, according to their proverb, “to listen to the wind upon the hill till the waters abate.”  But they will be disappointed; they have been too often troublesome to be so repeatedly passed over, and this time John Bull has been too heartily frightened to recover his good-humour for some time.  The Hanoverian ministers always deserved to be hanged for rascals; but now, if they get the power in their hands,—­as, sooner or later, they must, since there is neither rising in England nor assistance from France,—­they will deserve the gallows as fools if they leave a single clan in the Highlands in a situation to be again troublesome to government.  Ay, they will make root-and-branch-work, I warrant them.’

‘And while you recommend flight to me,’ said Edward,—­’a counsel which I would rather die than embrace,—­what are your own views?’

‘O,’ answered Fergus, with a melancholy air, ’my fate is settled.  Dead or captive I must be before tomorrow.’

‘What do you mean by that, my friend?’ said Edward.  ’The enemy is still a day’s march in our rear, and if he comes up, we are still strong enough to keep him in check.  Remember Gladsmuir.’

’What I tell you is true notwithstanding, so far as I am individually concerned.’

‘Upon what authority can you found so melancholy a prediction?’ asked Waverley.

‘On one which never failed a person of my house.  I have seen,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘I have seen the Bodach Glas.’

‘Bodach Glas?’

’Yes; have you been so long at Glennaquoich, and never heard of the Grey Spectre? though indeed there is a certain reluctance among us to mention him.’

‘No, never.’

’Ah! it would have been a tale for poor Flora to have told you.  Or, if that hill were Benmore, and that long blue lake, which you see just winding towards yon mountainous country, were Loch Tay, or my own Loch an Ri, the tale would be better suited with scenery.  However, let us sit down on this knoll; even Saddleback and Ulswater will suit what I have to say better than the English hedgerows, enclosures, and farmhouses.  You must know, then, that when my ancestor, Ian nan Chaistel, wasted Northumberland, there was associated with him in the expedition a sort of Southland Chief, or captain of a band of Lowlanders, called Halbert Hall.  In their return through