‘My lovely sister,’ replied Fergus, ’like her loving brother, is very apt to have a pretty decisive will of her own, by which, in this case, you must be ruled; but you shall not want my interest, nor my counsel.  And, in the first place, I will give you one hint —­Loyalty is her ruling passion; and since she could spell an English book she has been in love with the memory of the gallant Captain Wogan, who renounced the service of the usurper Cromwell to join the standard of Charles II, marched a handful of cavalry from London to the Highlands to join Middleton, then in arms for the king, and at length died gloriously in the royal cause.  Ask her to show you some verses she made on his history and fate; they have been much admired, I assure you.  The next point is—­I think I saw Flora go up towards the waterfall a short time since; follow, man, follow! don’t allow the garrison time to strengthen its purposes of resistance.  Alerte a la muraille!  Seek Flora out, and learn her decision as soon as you can, and Cupid go with you, while I go to look over belts and cartouch-boxes.’

Waverley ascended the glen with an anxious and throbbing heart.  Love, with all its romantic train of hopes, fears, and wishes, was mingled with other feelings of a nature less easily defined.  He could not but remember how much this morning had changed his fate, and into what a complication of perplexity it was likely to plunge him.  Sunrise had seen him possessed of an esteemed rank in the honourable profession of arms, his father to all appearance rapidly rising in the favour of his sovereign.  All this had passed away like a dream:  he himself was dishonoured, his father disgraced, and he had become involuntarily the confidant at least, if not the accomplice, of plans, dark, deep, and dangerous, which must infer either the subversion of the government he had so lately served or the destruction of all who had participated in them.  Should Flora even listen to his suit favourably, what prospect was there of its being brought to a happy termination amid the tumult of an impending insurrection?  Or how could he make the selfish request that she should leave Fergus, to whom she was so much attached, and, retiring with him to England, wait, as a distant spectator, the success of her brother’s undertaking, or the ruin of all his hopes and fortunes?  Or, on the other hand, to engage himself, with no other aid than his single arm, in the dangerous and precipitate counsels of the Chieftain, to be whirled along by him, the partaker of all his desperate and impetuous motions, renouncing almost the power of judging, or deciding upon the rectitude or prudence of his actions, this was no pleasing prospect for the secret pride of Waverley to stoop to.  And yet what other conclusion remained, saving the rejection of his addresses by Flora, an alternative not to be thought of in the present high-wrought state of his feelings with anything short of mental agony.  Pondering the doubtful and dangerous prospect before him, he at length arrived near the cascade, where, as Fergus had augured, he found Flora seated.