With such bald and disjointed chat Evan went on illustrating the existing state of the Highlands, more perhaps to the amusement of Waverley than that of our readers.  At length, after having marched over bank and brae, moss and heather, Edward, though not unacquainted with the Scottish liberality in computing distance, began to think that Evan’s five miles were nearly doubled.  His observation on the large measure which the Scottish allowed of their land, in comparison to the computation of their money, was readily answered by Evan with the old jest, ’The deil take them wha have the least pint stoup.’

[Footnote:  The Scotch are liberal in computing their land and liquor; the Scottish pint corresponds to two English quarts.  As for their coin, every one knows the couplet—­

How can the rogues pretend to sense? 
Their pound is only twenty pence.]

And now the report of a gun was heard, and a sportsman was seen, with his dogs and attendant, at the upper end of the glen.  ‘Shough,’ said Dugald Mahony, ‘tat’s ta Chief.’

‘It is not,’ said Evan, imperiously.  ’Do you think he would come to meet a Sassenach duinhe-wassel in such a way as that?’

But as they approached a little nearer, he said, with an appearance of mortification, ’And it is even he, sure enough; and he has not his tail on after all; there is no living creature with him but Callum Beg.’

In fact, Fergus Mac-Ivor, of whom a Frenchman might have said as truly as of any man in the Highlands, ’Qu’il connoit bien ses gens’ had no idea of raising himself in the eyes of an English young man of fortune by appearing with a retinue of idle Highlanders disproportioned to the occasion.  He was well aware that such an unnecessary attendance would seem to Edward rather ludicrous than respectable; and, while few men were more attached to ideas of chieftainship and feudal power, he was, for that very reason, cautious of exhibiting external marks of dignity, unless at the time and in the manner when they were most likely to produce an imposing effect.  Therefore, although, had he been to receive a brother chieftain, he would probably have been attended by all that retinue which Evan described with so much unction, he judged it more respectable to advance to meet Waverley with a single attendant, a very handsome Highland boy, who carried his master’s shooting-pouch and his broadsword, without which he seldom went abroad.

When Fergus and Waverley met, the latter was struck with the peculiar grace and dignity of the Chieftain’s figure.  Above the middle size and finely proportioned, the Highland dress, which he wore in its simplest mode, set off his person to great advantage.  He wore the trews, or close trowsers, made of tartan, chequed scarlet and white; in other particulars his dress strictly resembled Evan’s, excepting that he had no weapon save a dirk, very richly mounted with silver.  His page, as we have said, carried