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.

ROB ROY. 163
shine. Our walk was for some minutes in perfect silence. At length my
conductor spoke.
"Are you afraid?"
"I retort your own words," I replied: "wherefore should I fear?"
"Because you are with a stranger-perhaps an enemy, in a place where
you have no friends and many enemies."
" I neither fear you nor them; I am young, active, and armed."
"I am not armed," replied my conductor: "but no matter, a willing hand
never lacked weapon. You say you fear nothing; but if you knew who was
by your side, perhaps you might underlie a tremor."
" And why should I?" replied I. " I again repeat, I fear nought that
you can do."
"Nought that I can do?-Be it so. But do you not fear the consequences
of being found with one whose very name whispered in this lonely street
would make the stones themselves rise up to apprehend him —on whose
head half the men in Glasgow would build their fortune as on a found
treasure, had they the luck to grip him by the collar-the sound of whose
apprehension were as welcome at the Cross of Edinburgh as ever the news
of a field stricken and won in Flanders?"
"And who then are you, whose name should create so deep a feeling of
terror?" I replied.
"No enemy of yours, since I am conveying, you to a place, where, were
I myself recognised and identified, iron to the heels, and hemp to the craig,
would be my brief dooming."
I paused and stood still on the pavement, drawitig back so as to have the
most perfect view of my companion which the light afforded, and which
was sufficient to guard me against any sudden motion of assault.
" You have said," I answered, " either too much or too little - too much
to induce me to confide in you as a mere stranger, since. you avow yourself a
person amenable to the laws of the country in which we are-and too little,
unless you could show that you are unjustly subjected to their rigour."
As I ceased to speak, he made a step towards me. I drew back instinctively, and laid my hand on the hilt of my sword.
" What?" said he-" on an unarmed man, and your friend?"
"I am yet ignorant if you are either the one or the other," I replied;
" and, to say the truth, your language and manner might well entitle me to
doubt both."
"It is manfully spoken," replied my conductor; "and I respect him
whose hand can keep his head. —I will be frank and free with you-I am
conveying you to prison."
"To prison!" I exclaimed-" by what warrant, or for what offence?You shall have my life sooner than my liberty-I defy you, and I will not
follow you a step farther."
"I do not," he said, "carry you there as a prisoner; I am," he added,
drawing himself haughtily up, "neither a messenger nor sheriff's officer.
I carry you to see a prisoner from whose lips you will learn the risk in
which you presently stand. Iogur liberty is little risked by the visit; mine
is in some peril; but that I readily encounter on your account, for I care
not for risk, and I love a free young blood, that kens no protector but the
cross o' the sword."
While he spoke thus, we had reached the principal street, and were
pausing before a large building of hewn stone, garnished, as I thought I
could perceive, with gratings of iron before tile windows.
"'Muckle," said the stranger, whose language became more broadly
national as he assumed a tone of colloquial freedom-"Muckle wad the
provost and bailies o' Glasgow gie to hae him sitting with iron garters to
his hose within their tolbooth that now stands wi' his legs as free as the
red-deer's on the outside on't. And little wad it avail them; for an if they