you without enlisting banditti, and
your own honour is above taint. - Why don't you send this Donald Bean Lean, whom
I hate for his smoothness and duplicity even more than for his rapine, out of
your country at once? No cause should induce me to tolerate such a character.«
    »No cause, Flora!« said the Chieftain significantly.
    »No cause, Fergus! not even that which is nearest to my heart. Spare it the
omen of such evil supporters!«
    »O but, sister,« rejoined the Chief gaily, »you don't consider my respect
for la belle passion. Evan Dhu Maccombich is in love with Donald's daughter,
Alice, and you cannot expect me to disturb him in his amours. Why, the whole
clan would cry shame on me. You know it is one of their wise sayings that a
kinsman is part of a man's body, but a foster-brother is a piece of his heart.«
    »Well, Fergus, there is no disputing with you; but I would all this may end
well.«
    »Devoutly prayed, my dear and prophetic sister, and the best way in the
world to close a dubious argument. - But hear ye not the pipes, Captain
Waverley? Perhaps you will like better to dance to them in the hall, than to be
deafened with their harmony without taking part in the exercise they invite us
to.«
    Waverley took Flora's hand. The dance, song, and merrymaking proceeded, and
closed the day's entertainment at the castle of Vich Ian Vohr. Edward at length
retired, his mind agitated by a variety of new and conflicting feelings, which
detained him from rest for some time, in that not unpleasing state of mind in
which fancy takes the helm, and the soul rather drifts passively along with the
rapid and confused tide of reflections, than exerts itself to encounter,
systematise, or examine them. At a late hour he fell asleep, and dreamed of
Flora Mac-Ivor.
 

                             Chapter Twenty-Fourth.

                       A Stag-Hunt and Its Consequences.

Shall this be a long or a short chapter? - This is a question in which you,
gentle reader, have no vote, however much you may be interested in the
consequences; just as you may (like myself) probably have nothing to do with the
imposing a new tax, excepting the trifling circumstance of being obliged to pay
it. More happy surely in the present case, since, though it lies within my
arbitrary power to extend my materials as I think