in a small basket what she thought worth removing, and
hinging her plaid around her, she advanced up to Edward, and, with the
utmost simplicity, taking hold of his hand, offered her cheek to his
salute, dropping, at the same time, her little curtsy. Evan, who was
esteemed a wag among the mountain fair, advanced, as if to secure a
similar favour; but Alice, snatching up her basket, escaped up the
rocky bank as fleetly as a roe, and, turning round and laughing, called
something out to him in Gaelic, which he answered in the same tone and
language; then, waving her hand to Edward, she resumed her road, and
was soon lost among the thickets, though they continued for some time to
hear her lively carol, as she proceeded gaily on her solitary journey.

They now again entered the gorge of the cavern, and stepping into the
boat, the Highlander pushed off, and, taking advantage of the morning
breeze, hoisted a clumsy sort of sail, while Evan assumed the helm,
directing their course, as it appeared to Waverley, rather higher up the
lake than towards the place of his embarkation on the preceding night.
As they glided along the silver mirror, Evan opened the conversation
with a panegyric upon Alice, who, he said, was both CANNY and FENDY;
and was, to the boot of all that, the best dancer of a strathspey in
the whole strath. Edward assented to her praises so far as he understood
them, yet could not help regretting that she was condemned to such a
perilous and dismal life.

'Oich! for that,' said Evan, 'there is nothing in Perthshire that she
need want, if she ask her father to fetch it, unless it be too hot or
too heavy.

'But to be the daughter of a cattle-stealer--a common thief!'

'Common thief!--no such thing: Donald Bean Lean never LIFTED less than a
drove in his life.'

'Do you call him an uncommon thief, then?'

'No--he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a
cottar, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird, is a
gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon
from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is
what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.'

'But what can this end in, were he taken in such an appropriation?'

'To be sure he would DIE FOR THE LAW, as many a pretty man has done
before him.'

'Die for the law!'

'Aye; that is, with the law, or by the law; be strapped up on the
KIND gallows of Crieff, [12] where his father di