To accommodation, which was narrow enough. cover with an appearance of indifference his feeling of the want of respect with which he was treated, he addressed one of the men, as he passed him without any show of greeting, salute, or recognition. "Giles Baillie," he said, "have you heard that your son Gabriel is well?" (The question respected the young man who had been pressed.) "If I had heard otherwise," said the old man, looking up with a stern and menacing countenance, "you should have heard of it too." And he plodded on his way, tarrying no further question. When the laird had pressed on with difficulty among a crowd of familiar faces, which had on all former occasions marked his approach with the reverence due to that of a superior being, but in which he now only read hatred and contempt, and had got clear of the throng, he could not help turning his horse and looking back to mark the progress of their march. The group would have been an excellent subject for the pencil of Calotte. The van had already reached a small and stunted thicket, which was at the bottom of the hill, and which gradually hid the line of march until the last stragglers disappeared. His sensations were bitter enough. The race, it is true, which he had thus summarily dismissed from their ancient place of refuge was idle and vicious; but had he endeavoured to render them otherwise? They were not more irregular characters now than they had been while they were admitted to consider themselves as a sort of subordinate dependents of his family; and ought the mere circumstance of his becoming a magistrate to 1 This anecdote is a literal fact. |