d never heard up to that moment.

As the magistrate's examination proceeded, Waverley was astonished to
find that, instead of clearing himself, everything he said, every
article he carried about his person, was set down by Major Melville as
an additional proof of his complicity with treason. Among these figured
Flora's verses, his own presence at the great hunting match among the
mountains, his father's and Sir Everard's letters, even the huge
manuscripts written by his tutor (of which he had never read six
pages)--all were brought forward as so many evidences of his guilt.

Finally, the magistrate informed Edward that he would be compelled to
detain him a prisoner in his house of Cairnvreckan. But that if he would
furnish such information as it was doubtless in his power to give
concerning the forces and plans of Vich Ian Vohr and the other Highland
chiefs, he might, after a brief detention, be allowed to go free. Edward
fiercely exclaimed that he would die rather than turn informer against
those who had been his friends and hosts. Whereupon, having refused all
hospitality, he was conducted to a small room, there to be guarded till
there was a chance of sending him under escort to the Castle of
Stirling.

Here he was visited by Mr. Morton, the minister who had saved him from
the clutches of the mob, and so sympathetically and kindly did he speak,
that Edward told him his whole story from the moment when he had first
left Waverley-Honour. And though the minister's favourable report did
not alter the opinion Major Melville had formed of Edward's treason, it
softened his feelings toward the young man so much that he invited him
to dinner, and afterwards did his best to procure him favourable
treatment from the Westland Whig captain, Mr. Gifted Gilfillan, who
commanded the party which was to convoy him to Stirling Castle.

The escort which was to take Edward southward was not so strong as it
might have been. Part of Captain Gifted Gilfillan's command had stayed
behind to hear a favourite preacher upon the occasion of the afternoon
Fast Day service at Cairnvreckan. Others straggled for purposes of their
own, while as they went along, their leader lectured Edward upon the
fewness of those that should be saved. Heaven, he informed Edward, would
be peopled exclusively by the members of his own denomination. Captain
Gifted was still engaged in condemning all and sundry belonging to the
Churches of England and Scotland, when