The officer smiled and shook his head.  ’I must not forget my situation so far as to attempt a formal confutation of that opinion; but, notwithstanding your success and the valour which achieved it, you have undertaken a task to which your strength appears wholly inadequate.’

At this moment Fergus pushed into the press.

’Come, Edward, come along; the Prince has gone to Pinkie House for the night; and we must follow, or lose the whole ceremony of the caligae.  Your friend, the Baron, has been guilty of a great piece of cruelty; he has insisted upon dragging Bailie Macwheeble out to the field of battle.  Now, you must know, the Bailie’s greatest horror is an armed Highlander or a loaded gun; and there he stands, listening to the Baron’s instructions concerning the protest, ducking his head like a sea-gull at the report of every gun and pistol that our idle boys are firing upon the fields, and undergoing, by way of penance, at every symptom of flinching a severe rebuke from his patron, who would not admit the discharge of a whole battery of cannon, within point-blank distance, as an apology for neglecting a discourse in which the honour of his family is interested.’

‘But how has Mr. Bradwardine got him to venture so far?’ said Edward.

’Why, he had come as far as Musselburgh, I fancy, in hopes of making some of our wills; and the peremptory commands of the Baron dragged him forward to Preston after the battle was over.  He complains of one or two of our ragamuffins having put him in peril of his life by presenting their pieces at him; but as they limited his ransom to an English penny, I don’t think we need trouble the provost-marshal upon that subject.  So come along, Waverley.’

‘Waverley!’ said the English officer, with great emotion;’ the nephew of Sir Everard Waverley, of——­shire?’

‘The same, sir,’ replied our hero, somewhat surprised at the tone in which he was addressed.

‘I am at once happy and grieved,’ said the prisoner, ’to have met with you.’

‘I am ignorant, sir,’ answered Waverley, ’how I have deserved so much interest.’

‘Did your uncle never mention a friend called Talbot?’

‘I have heard him talk with great regard of such a person,’ replied Edward; ’a colonel, I believe, in the army, and the husband of Lady Emily Blandeville; but I thought Colonel Talbot had been abroad.’

‘I am just returned,’ answered the officer; ’and being in Scotland, thought it my duty to act where my services promised to be useful.  Yes, Mr. Waverley, I am that Colonel Talbot, the husband of the lady you have named; and I am proud to acknowledge that I owe alike my professional rank and my domestic happiness to your generous and noble-minded relative.  Good God! that I should find his nephew in such a dress, and engaged in such a cause!’

‘Sir,’ said Fergus, haughtily, ’the dress and cause are those of men of birth and honour.’