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.

OLD MORTALITY. 599
that are ower drouthy wi' travel to be nice; but naething to ca' a stirring
trade or a thriving change-house."
6" Can you get me a guide there?" said Morton.
" Your honour will rest here a' the night?-ye'll hardly get accommodation at Bessie's," said Niel, whose regard for his deceased wife's relative by
no means extended to sending company from his own house to iers.
" There is a friend," answered Morton, ",whom I am to meet with there,
and I only called here to take a stirrup-cup and inquire the way."
" Your honour had better,'" answered the landlord, with the perseverance
of his calling, " send some ane to warn your friend to come on here."
"I tell you, landlord," answered Morton, impatiently, "that will not
serve my purpose; I must go straight to this woman Maclure's house, and
I desire you to find me a guide."
"Aweel, sir, ye'll choose for yoursell, to be sure," said Niel Blane, somewhat disconcerted; "but deil a guide ye'll need, if ye gae doun the water
for twa mile or sae, as gin ye were bound for Milnwood-house, and then tak
the first broken disjasked-looking road that makes for the hills-ye'll ken't
by a broken ash-tree that stands at the side o' a burn just where the road
meets; and then travel out the path — ye canna miss Widow Maclure's
public, for deil another house or hauld is on the road for ten lang Scots
miles, and that's worth twenty English. I am sorry your honour would
think o' gaun out o' my house the night. But my wife's good-sister is a
decent'woman, and it's no lost that a friend gets."
Morton accordingly paid his reckoning and departed. The sunset of
the summer day placed him at the ash-tree, where the path led up towards
the moors.
" Here," he said to himself, "my misfortunes commenced; for just here,
when Burley and I were about to separate on the frst night we ever met,
he was alarmed by the intelligence, that the passes were secured by soldiers
lying in wait for him. Beneath that very ash sate the old woman who apprized him of his danger. How strange that my whole fortunes should
have become inseparably interwoven with that'man's without anything
more on my part than the discharge of an ordinary duty of humanity!
Would to Heaven it were possible I could find my humble quiet and tranquillity of mind, upon the spot where I lost them 1"
Thus arranging his reflections betwixt speech and thought, he turned his
horse's head up the path.
Evening lowered around him as he advanced-up the narrow dell which had
once been a wood, but was now a ravine divested of trees, unless where a
few, from their inaccessible situation on the edge of precipitous banks, or
clinging among rocks and huge stones, defied the invasion of mei and of
cattle, like the scattered tribes of a conquered country, driven to take refuge
in the barren strength of its mountains. These too, wasted and decayed,
seemed rather to exist than to flourish, and only served to indicate what the
landscape had once been.. But the streamir brawled down among them in
all its freshness and vivacity, giving the life and animation which a mountain rivulet alone can confer' on the barest and most savage scenes, and
which'the inhabitants of such a country miss when gazing even upon the
tranquil winding of a<eiajestic stream through plains of fertility, and
beside palaces of splendfour. The track of the road followed the course
of the brook, which was now visible, and now only to be distinguished by
its brawling heard among the stones, or in the clefts of the rock, that occasionally interrupted its course.
" Murmurer that thou art," said: Morton; in the enthusiasm of his reverie,
-" why chafe with the rocks that stop thy course for a moment? There is
a sea to receive thee in its.bosom; and there is an eternity for man, when
his fretful and hasty course through the vale of time shall be ceased and
over. What thy petty fuming' is to the deep and vast billows of a shoreles2