me than a good Harlequin; also, if I
chance to have nothing better to do, I can still read my Georges Sand or
Alfred de Musset with much contentment, if only the story end well.

But we must not dress Cordelia or Rosalind in robes of triangular
patches, covered with spangles, by way of making the _coup d'oeil_ of
them less dull; and so the story-telling of Scott is like the robe of
the Sistine Zipporah--embroidered only on the edges with gold and blue,
and the embroidery involving a legend written in mystic letters.

And the interest and joy which he intends his reader to find in his
tale, are in taking up the golden thread here and there in its intended
recurrence--and following, as it rises again and again, his melody
through the disciplined and unaccented march of the fugue.

111. Thus the entire charm and meaning of the story of the Monastery
depend on the degree of sympathy with which we compare the first and
last incidents of the appearance of a character, whom perhaps not one in
twenty readers would remember as belonging to the dramatis
personae--Stawarth Bolton.

Childless, he assures safety in the first scene of the opening tale to
the widow of Glendinning and her two children--the elder boy challenging
him at the moment, "I will war on thee to the death, when I can draw my
father's sword." In virtually the last scene, the grown youth, now in
command of a small company of spearmen in the Regent Murray's service,
is on foot, in the first pause after the battle at Kennaquhair, beside
the dead bodies of Julian Avenel and Christie, and the dying
Catherine.[101]

Glendinning forgot for a moment his own situation and duties, and was
first recalled to them by a trampling of horse, and the cry of St.
George for England, which the English soldiers still continued to use.
His handful of men, for most of the stragglers had waited for Murray's
coming up, remained on horseback, holding their lances upright, having
no command either to submit or resist.

"There stands our captain," said one of them, as a strong party of
English came up, the vanguard of Foster's troop.

"Your captain! with his sword sheathed, and on foot in the presence of
his enemy? a raw soldier, I warrant him," said the English leader. "So!
ho! young man, is your dream out, and will you now answer me if you will
fight or fly?"

"Neither," answered Halbert Glendinning, with great tranquillity.

"Then throw down thy sword and yield thee," answered