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.

876 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
blue-eyed beauties, - these attracted more admiration from the western
youth, than either the splendour of her equipments or the figure of her
palfrey.
The attendance of these distinguished ladies was rather inferior to their
birth and fashion in those times, as it consisted only of two servants on
horseback. The truth was, that the good old lady had been obliged to make
all her domestic servants turn out to complete the quota which her barony
ought to furnish for the muster, and in which she would not for the universe have been found deficient. The old steward, who in steel cap and
jack-boots led forth her array, had, as he said, sweated blood and water in
his efforts to overcone the scruples and evasions of the moorland farmers,
who ought to have furnished men, hotrse, and harness, on these occasions.
At last, their dispute came near to an open declaration of hostilities, the
incensed episcopalian bestowing on the recusants the whole thunders of the
commination, and receiving from them, in return, the denunciations of a
Calvinistic excommunication. What was to be done? -To punish the -refractory tenants would have been easy enough — the privy council would
readily have imposed fines, and sent a troop of horse to collect them. But
this would have been calling the huntsman and the hounds into the garden
to kill the hare.
"For," said H-arrison to himself, " the carles have little enough gear at
ony rate, and if I call in the red-coats and take away what little they have,
how is my worshipful lady to get her rents paid at Candlemas, which'is but
a difficult matter to bring round even in the best of times?"
So he armed the fowler and falconer, the footman, and the ploughlman
at the home farm, with an old drunken cavaliering butler, who had served
with the late Sir Richard under Montrose, and stunned the family nightly
with his exploits at Kilsythe and Tippermoor, and who was the only man
in the party that had the smallest zeal for the work in hand. In this manner, and by recruiting one or two latitudinarian poachers and black-fishers,
Mr. I-Harrison completed the quota of men which fell to the share of Lady
Margaret Bellenden, as liferentrix of the barony of Tillietudlem and others.
But when the steward, on the morning of the eventful day, had mustered
his troupe doere before the iron gate of the tower, the mother of Cuddie
Headrigg the ploughman appeared, loaded with the jack-boots, buff coat,
and other accoutrements which had been issued forth for the service of
the day, and laid them before the steward; demurely assuring him, that
" whether it were the colic, or a qualm of conscience, she couldna tak upon
her to decide, but sure it was, Cuddie had been in sair straits a' night, and she
couldna say he was muckle better this morning.-The finger of He-aven,"
she said, "was in it, and her bairn should gang on nae sic errands."
Pains, penalties, and threats of dismission, were denounced in vain; the
mother was obstinate, and Cuddie, who underwent a domiciliary visitation
for the purpose of verifying his state of body, could, or would, answer only
by deep groans. Mause, who had been an ancient domestic in the family,
was a sort of favourite with Lady Margaret, and presumed accordingly.
Lady Margaret had herself set forth, and her authority could not be appealed to. In this dilemma, the good genius of the old butler suggested an
expedient.
"He had seen mony a braw callant, far less than Guse Gibbie, fight
brawly under Montrose. What for no tak Guse Gibbie?"
This was a half-witted lad of very small stature, who had a kind of charge
of the poultry under the old henwife; for in a Scottish family of that day,
there was a wonderful substitution of labour. This urchin being sent for
from the stubble-field, was hastily muffled in the buff coat, and girded
rather to than with the sword of a full-grown man, his little legs plunged
into jack-boots, and a steel cap put upon his head, which seemed, from its
size, as if it had been intended to extinguish him. Thus accoutred, he was