 the subject was resumed.
    »I believe,« said Major Melville, »that I must give this young man in charge
to some of the detached parties of armed volunteers, who were lately sent out to
overawe the disaffected districts. They are now recalled towards Stirling, and a
small body comes this way to-morrow or next day, commanded by the westland man,
- what's his name? - You saw him, and said he was the very model of one of
Cromwell's military saints.«
    »Gilfillan, the Cameronian,« answered Mr. Morton. »I wish the young
gentleman may be safe with him. Strange things are done in the heat and hurry of
minds in so agitating a crisis, and I fear Gilfillan is of a sect which has
suffered persecution without learning mercy.«
    »He has only to lodge Mr. Waverley in Stirling Castle,« said the Major: »I
will give strict injunctions to treat him well.
    I really cannot devise any better mode for securing him, and I fancy you
would hardly advise me to encounter the responsibility of setting him at
liberty.«
    »But you will have no objection to my seeing him to-morrow in private?« said
the minister.
    »None, 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 Thirty-Third.

                                  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'
