e, certainly; your loyalty and character are my warrant. But with
what view do you make the request?'

'Simply,' replied Mr. Morton, 'to make the experiment whether he may not
be brought to communicate to me some circumstances which may hereafter
be useful to alleviate, if not to exculpate his conduct.'

The friends now parted and retired to rest, each filled with the most
anxious reflections on the state of the country.

CHAPTER XXXIII

A CONFIDANT

Waverley awoke in the morning, from troubled dreams and unrefreshing
slumbers, to a full consciousness of the horrors of his situation. How
it might terminate he knew not. He might be delivered up to military
law, which, in the midst of civil war, was not likely to be scrupulous
in the choice of its victims, or the quality of the evidence. Nor did he
feel much more comfortable at the thoughts of a trial before a Scottish
court of justice, where he knew the laws and forms differed in many
respects from those of England, and had been taught to believe, however
erroneously, that the liberty and rights of the subject were less
carefully protected. A sentiment of bitterness rose in his mind against
the Government, which he considered as the cause of his embarrassment
and peril, and he cursed internally his scrupulous rejection of
Mac-Ivor's invitation to accompany him to the field.

'Why did not I,' he said to himself, 'like other men of honour, take the
earliest opportunity to welcome to Britain the descendant of her ancient
kings, and lineal heir of her throne? Why did not I

Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,
And welcome home again discarded faith,
Seek out Prince Charles, and fall before his feet?

All that has been recorded of excellence and worth in the house of
Waverley has been founded upon their loyal faith to the house of Stuart.
From the interpretation which this Scotch magistrate has put upon
the letters of my uncle and father, it is plain that I ought to have
understood them as marshalling me to the course of my ancestors; and it
has been my gross dullness, joined to the obscurity of expression which
they adopted for the sake of security, that has confounded my judgement.
Had I yielded to the first generous impulse of indignation when I
learned that my honour was practised upon, how different had been my
present situation! I had then been free and in arms, fighting, like my
forefathers, for love, for loyalty, and for fame. And now I am h