few
congenial ties with those who were the objects of persecution, and was disgusted
alike by their narrow-minded and selfish party-spirit, their gloomy fanaticism,
their abhorrent condemnation of all elegant studies or innocent exercises, and
the envenomed rancour of their political hatred. But his mind was still more
revolted by the tyrannical and oppressive conduct of the Government - the
misrule, license, and brutality of the soldiery - the executions on the
scaffold, the slaughters in the open field, the free quarters and exactions
imposed by military law, which placed the lives and fortunes of a free people on
a level with Asiatic slaves. Condemning, therefore, each party as its excesses
fell under his eyes, disgusted with the sight of evils which he had no means of
alleviating, and hearing alternate complaints and exultations with which he
could not sympathise, he would long ere this have left Scotland, had it not been
for his attachment to Edith Bellenden.
    The earlier meetings of these young people had been at Charnwood, when Major
Bellenden, who was as free from suspicion on such occasions as Uncle Toby
himself, had encouraged their keeping each other constant company, without
entertaining any apprehension of the natural consequences. Love, as usual in
such cases, borrowed the name of friendship, used her language, and claimed her
privileges. When Edith Bellenden was recalled to her mother's castle, it was
astonishing by what singular and recurring accidents she often met young Morton
in her sequestered walks, especially considering the distance of their place of
abode. Yet it somehow happened that she never expressed the surprise which the
frequency of these rencontres ought naturally to have excited, and that their
intercourse assumed gradually a more delicate character, and their meetings
began to wear the air of appointments. Books, drawings, letters, were exchanged
between them, and every trifling commission, given or executed, gave rise to a
new correspondence. Love, indeed, was not yet mentioned between them by name,
but each knew the situation of their own bosom, and could not but guess at that
of the other. Unable to desist from an intercourse which possessed such charms
for both, yet trembling for its too probable consequences, it had been continued
without specific explanation until now, when fate appeared to have taken the
conclusion into its own hands.
    It followed, as a consequence of this state of things, as well as of the
diffidence of Morton's disposition at this period, that his confidence in
Edith's return of his affection had its occasional cold fits. Her situation was
in every respect so superior to his own, her worth so