‘But he is a very polite, handsome man,’ continued Rose; ’and his sister Flora is one of the most beautiful and accomplished young ladies in this country; she was bred in a convent in France, and was a great friend of mine before this unhappy dispute.  Dear Captain Waverley, try your influence with my father to make matters up.  I am sure this is but the beginning of our troubles; for Tully-Veolan has never been a safe or quiet residence when we have been at feud with the Highlanders.  When I was a girl about ten, there was a skirmish fought between a party of twenty of them and my father and his servants behind the mains; and the bullets broke several panes in the north windows, they were so near.  Three of the Highlanders were killed, and they brought them in wrapped in their plaids, and laid them on the stone floor of the hall; and next morning, their wives and daughters came, clapping their hands, and crying the coronach, and shrieking, and carried away the dead bodies, with the pipes playing before them.  I could not sleep for six weeks without starting and thinking I heard these terrible cries, and saw the bodies lying on the steps, all stiff and swathed up in their bloody tartans.  But since that time there came a party from the garrison at Stirling, with a warrant from the Lord Justice Clerk, or some such great man, and took away all our arms; and now, how are we to protect ourselves if they come down in any strength?’

Waverley could not help starting at a story which bore so much resemblance to one of his own day-dreams.  Here was a girl scarce seventeen, the gentlest of her sex, both in temper and appearance, who had witnessed with her own eyes such a scene as he had used to conjure up in his imagination, as only occurring in ancient times, and spoke of it coolly, as one very likely to recur.  He felt at once the impulse of curiosity, and that slight sense of danger which only serves to heighten its interest.  He might have said with Malvolio, ’"I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me!” I am actually in the land of military and romantic adventures, and it only remains to be seen what will be my own share in them.’

The whole circumstances now detailed concerning the state of the country seemed equally novel and extraordinary.  He had indeed often heard of Highland thieves, but had no idea of the systematic mode in which their depredations were conducted; and that the practice was connived at, and even encouraged, by many of the Highland chieftains, who not only found the creaghs, or forays, useful for the purpose of training individuals of their clan to the practice of arms, but also of maintaining a wholesome terror among their Lowland neighbours, and levying, as we have seen, a tribute from them, under colour of protection-money.