The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

174 WAVERLEY NO VELS.
All understood at once that some disaster had happened in the country, and
each inquired the cause at his neighbour, who knew as little as the querist.
At length the rumour reached, in a distinct shape, the ears of Edle Ochiltree, who was in the very centre of the assembly. The boat of Muckle'
backit, the fisherman whom we have so often mentioned, had been swamped
at sea, and four men had perished, it was affirmed, including Mucklebackit
and his son. Rumour had in this, however, as in other cases, gone beyond
the truth. The boat had indeed been overset; but Stephen, or, as he was
called, Steenie Mucklebackit, was the only man who had been drowned.
Although the place of his residence and his mode of life removed the young
man from the society of the country folks, yet they failed not to pause in
their rustic mirth to pay that tribute to sudden calamity, which it seldom
fails to receive in cases of infrequent occurrence. To- Ochiltree, in particular, the news came like a knell, the rather that he had so lately engaged
this young man's assistance in an affair of sportive mischief; and though
neither loss nor injury was designed to the German adept, yet the work
was not precisely one in which the latter hours of life ought to be occupied.
Misfortunes never come alone. While Ochiltree, pensively leaning upon
his staff, added his regrets to those of the hamlet which bewailed the young
man's sudden death, and internally blamed himself for the transaction in
which he had so lately engaged him, the old man's collar was seized by a
peace-officer, who displayed his baton in his right hand, and exclaimed,
"In the king's name."
The gauger and schoolmaster united their rhetoric, to prove to the constable and his assistant that he had no right to arrest the king's bedesman
as a vagrant; and the mute eloquence of the miller and smith, which was
vested in their clenched fists, was prepared to give highland bail for their
arbiter; his blue gown, they said, was his warrant for travelling the
country.
" But his blue gown," answered the officer, "i is nae protection for assault,
robbery, and murder; and my warrant is against him for these crimes."
" Murder!" said Edie, " murder! wha did I e'er murder?"
" Mr. German Doustercivil, the agent at Glen-Withershins miningworks."
" Murder Dustersnivel? - hout, he's living, and life-like, man."
" Nae thanks to you if he be; he had a sair struggle for his life, if a' be
true he tells, and ye maun answer for't at the bidding of the law."
The defenders of the mendicant shrunk back at hearing the atrocity of
the charges against him, but more than one kind hand thrust meat and
bread and pence upon Edie, to maintain him in the prison, to which the
officers were about to conduct him.
"Thanks to ye! God bless ye a' bairns!-I've gotten out o' mony a
snare when I was waur deserving o' deliverance-I shall escape like a bird
from the fowler. Play out your play, and never mind me — I am mair
grieved for the puir lad that's gane, than for aught they can do to me."
Accordingly, the unresisting prisoner was led off, while he mechanically
accepted and stored in his wallets the alms which poured in on every hand,
and ere he left the hamlet, was as deep-laden as a government victualler.
The labour of bearing this accumulating burden was, however, abridged, by
the officer procuring a cart and horse to convey the old man to a magistrate
in order to his examination and committal.
The disaster of Steenie, and the arrest of Edie, put a stop to the sports
of the village, the pensive inhabitants of which began to speculate upon
the vicissitudes of human affairs, which had so suddenly consigned one of
their comrades to the grave, and placed the master of the revels in some
danger of being hanged. The character of Dousterswivel being pretty
generally known, which was in his case equivalent to being pretty gene.