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 HIGHLAND WIDOW. 415
solemn reverence the remains of their comrade in the coffin, while the Dead
March was again struck up, and the several companies marching in single
files, passed the coffin one by one, in order that all might receive from the
awful spectacle the warning which it was peculiarly intended to afford.
The regiment was then marched off the ground, and reascended the ancient
cliff, their music, as usual on such occasions, striking lively strains, as if
sorrow, or even deep thought, should as short a while as possible be the
tenant of the soldier's bosom.
At the same time the small party, which we before mentioned, bore the
bier of the ill-fated Hamish to his humble grave, in a corner of the churchyard of Dunbarton, usually assigned to criminals. Here, among the dust
of the guilty, lies a youth, whose name, had he survived the ruin of the
fatal events by which he was hurried into crime, might have adorned the
annals of the brave.
The minister of Glenorquhy left Dunbarton, immediately after he had
witnessed the last scene of this melancholy catastrophe. His reason acquiesced in the justice of the sentence, which required blood for blood, and he
acknowledged that the vindictive character of his countrymen required to
be powerfully restrained by the strong curb of social law. But still he
mourned over the individual victim. Who may arraign the bolt of Heaven
when it bursts among the sons of the forest; yet who can refrain from
mourning, when it selects for the object of its blighting aim the fair stem
of a young oak, that promised to be the pride of the dell in which it
flourished? Musing on these melancholy events, noon found him engaged
in the mountain passes, by which he was to return to his still distant home.
Confident in his knowledge of the country, the clergyman had left the
main road, to seek one of those shorter paths, which are only used by
pedestrians, or by men, like the minister, mounted on the small, but surefooted, hardy, and sagacious horses of the country. The place which he
now traversed, was in itself gloomy and desolate, and tradition had added
to it the terror of superstition, by affirming it was haunted by an evil spirit,
termed Cloght-dearg, that is, Redmantle, who at all times, but especially at
noon and at midnight, traversed the glen, in enmity both to man and the
inferior creation, did such evil as her power was permitted to extend to, and
afflicted with ghastly terrors those whom she had not license otherwise to
hurt.
The minister of Glenorquhy had set his face in opposition to many of
these superstitions, which he justly thought were derived from the dark
ages of Popery, perhaps even from those of Paganism, and unfit to be
entertained or believed by the Christians of an enlightened age. Some of
his more attached parishioners considered him as too rash in opposing the
ancient faith of their fathers; and though they honoured the moral intrepidity of their pastor, they could not avoid entertaining and expressing
fears, that he would one day fall a victim to his temerity, and be torn to
pieces in the glen of the Cloght-dearg, or some of those other haunted wilds,
which he appeared rather to have a pride and pleasure in traversing alone,
on the days and hours when the wicked spirits were supposed to have
especial power over man and beast.
These legends came across the mind of the clergyman; and, solitary as
he was, a melancholy smile shaded his cheek, as he thought of the inconsistency of human nature, and reflected how many brave men, whom the
yell of the pibroch would have sent headlong against fixed bayonets, as the
wild bull rushes on his enemy, might have yet feared to encounter those
visionary terrors, which he himself, a man of peace, and in ordinary perils
no way remarkable for the firmness of his nerves, was now risking without
hesitation.
As he looked around the scene of desolation, he could not but acknowledge, in his own mind, that it was not ill chosen for the haunt of those