that he protested
he could beat any known march or point of war known in the British army, and had
accordingly commenced with »Dumbarton's Drums,« when he was silenced by Gifted
Gilfillan, the commander of the party, who refused to permit his followers to
move to this profane, and even, as he said, persecuting tune, and commanded the
drummer to beat the 119th Psalm. As this was beyond the capacity of the drubber
of sheepskin, he was fain to have recourse to the inoffensive row-de-dow, as a
harmless substitute for the sacred music which his instrument or skill were
unable to achieve. This may be held a trifling anecdote, but the drummer in
question was no less than town-drummer of Anderton. I remember his successor in
office, a member of that enlightened body, the British Convention: be his
memory, therefore, treated with due respect.
 

                             Chapter Thirty-Fifth.

                         A Volunteer Sixty Years Since.

On hearing the unwelcome sound of the drum, Major Melville hastily opened a
sashed-door, and stepped out upon a sort of terrace which divided his house from
the high-road from which the martial music proceeded. Waverley and his new
friend followed him, though probably he would have dispensed with their
attendance. They soon recognised in solemn march, first, the performer upon the
drum; secondly, a large flag of four compartments, on which were inscribed the
words COVENANT, KIRK, KING, KINGDOMS. The person who was honoured with this
charge was followed by the commander of the party, a thin, dark, rigid-looking
man, about sixty years old. The spiritual pride, which in mine Host of the
Candlestick mantled in a sort of supercilious hypocrisy, was in this man's face
elevated and yet darkened by genuine and undoubting fanaticism. It was
impossible to behold him without imagination placing him in some strange crisis,
where religious zeal was the ruling principle. A martyr at the stake, a soldier
in the field, a lonely and banished wanderer consoled by the intensity and
supposed purity of his faith under every earthly privation; perhaps a
persecuting inquisitor, as terrific in power as unyielding in adversity; any of
these seemed congenial characters to this personage. With these high traits of
energy, there was something in the affected precision and solemnity of his
deportment and discourse that bordered upon the ludicrous; so that, according to
the mood of the spectator's mind, and the light under which Mr. Gilfillan
presented himself, one might have feared, admired, or laughed at him. His dress
was that of a