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.

THE ANTIQUARY. 181
" Son of a what?" exclaimed Oldbuck.
" It means, I think," said the young soldier, with some reluctance, " son
of a female dog:
Do you compare your psalms,
To the tales of the bare-arm'd Fenians?"
"Are you sure you are translating that last epithet correctly, Hector?"
"Quite sure, sir," answered Hector, doggedly.
"Because I should have thought the nudity might have been quoted as
existing in a different part of the body."
Disdaining to reply to this insinuation, Hector proceeded in his recita
tion:
"I shall think it no great harm
To wring your bald head from your shouldersBut what is that yonder?" exclaimed Hector, interrupting himself.
" One of the herd of Proteus," said the Antiquary -" a phoca, or seal,
lying asleep on the beach."
Upon which M'Intyre, with the eagerness of a young sportsman, totally
forgot both Ossian, Patrick, his uncle, and his wound, and exclaiming-" I
shall have her! I shall have her!" snatched the walking-stick out of the
hand of the astonished Antiquary, at some risk of throwing-him down, and
set of at full speed to get between the animal and the sea, to which element,
having caught the alarm, she was rapidly retreating.
Not Sancho, when his master interrupted his account of the combatants
of Pentapolin with the naked arm, to advance in person to the charge of
the flock of sheep, stood more confounded than Oldbuck at this sudden
escapade of his nephew.
"Is the devil in him," was his first exclam'ation, " to go to disturb the
brute that was never thinking of him!" - Then elevating his voice, " Hector- nephew — fool - let alone the Phoca - let alone the Phoca! -they
bite, I tell you, like furies. He minds me no more than a post. There —
there they are at it- Gad, the Phoca has the best of it! I am glad to see
it," said he, in the bitterness of his heart, though really alarmed for his
nephew's safety - " I am glad to see it, with all my heart and spirit."
In truth, the seal, finding her retreat intercepted by the light-footed soldier, confronted him manfully, and having sustained a heavy blow without
injury, she knitted her brows, as is the fashion of the animal when incensed,
and making use at once of her fore paws and her unwieldy strength, wrenched the weapon out of the assailant's hand, overturned him on the sands,
and scuttled away into the sea, without doing him any farther injury.
Captain M'Intyre, a good deal out of countenance at the issue of his exploit, just rose in time to receive the ironical congratulations of his uncle,
upon a single combat worthy to be commemorated by Ossian himself,
"since," said the Antiquary, "your magnanimous opponent hath fled,
though not upon eagle's wings, from the foe that was low - Egad, she
walloped away with all the grace of triumph, and has carried my stick off
also, by way of spolia opinta."
M'Intyre had little to answer for himself, except that a Highlander could
never pass a deer, a seal, or a salmon, where there was a possibility of
having a trial of skill with them, and that he had forgot one of his arms
was in a sling. He also made his fall an apology for returning back to
lMonkbarns, and thus escape the farther raillery of his uncle, as well as his
lamentations for his walking-stick.
" I cut it," he said, " in the classic woods of. Iawthornden, when I did
not expect always to have been a bachelor - I would not have given it for
an ocean of seals-O Hector! Hector! - thy namesake was born to be the
prop of Troy, and thou to be the plague of Monkbarns!"
Q