 and expense, in respect my horse
and mysell will lose to-morrow's day's-wark, besides the afternoon preaching.«
    Edward, out of patience, hemmed in and hustled by the rabble on every side,
and every moment expecting personal violence, resolved to try measures of
intimidation, and at length drew a pocket-pistol, threatening, on the one hand,
to shoot whomsoever dared to stop him, and, on the other, menacing Ebenezer with
a similar doom, if he stirred a foot with the horses. The sapient Partridge
says, that one man with a pistol is equal to a hundred unarmed, because, though
he can shoot but one of the multitude, yet no one knows but that he himself may
be that luckless individual. The levy en masse of Cairnvreckan would therefore
probably have given way, nor would Ebenezer, whose natural paleness had waxed
three shades more cadaverous, have ventured to dispute a mandate so enforced,
had not the Vulcan of the village, eager to discharge upon some more worthy
object the fury which his helpmate had provoked, and not ill satisfied to find
such an object in Waverley, rushed at him with the red-hot bar of iron, with
such determination as made the discharge of his pistol an act of self-defence.
The unfortunate man fell; and while Edward, thrilled with a natural horror at
the incident, neither had presence of mind to unsheathe his sword nor to draw
his remaining pistol, the populace threw themselves upon him, disarmed him, and
were about to use him with great violence, when the appearance of a venerable
clergyman, the pastor of the parish, put a curb on their fury.
    This worthy man (none of the Goukthrapples or Rentowels) maintained his
character with the common people, although he preached the practical fruits of
Christian faith, as well as its abstract tenets, and was respected by the higher
orders, notwithstanding he declined soothing their speculative errors by
converting the pulpit of the gospel into a school of heathen morality. Perhaps
it is owing to this mixture of faith and practice in his doctrine that, although
his memory has formed a sort of era in the annals of Cairnvreckan, so that the
parishioners, to denote what befell Sixty Years since, still say it happened »in
good Mr. Morton's time,« I have never been able to discover which he belonged
to, the evangelical or the moderate party in the kirk. Nor do I hold the
circumstance of much moment, since, in my own remembrance, the one was headed by
an Erskine, the other by a
