Three of the Highlanders were killed, and they brought them in, wrapped
in their plaids, and laid them on the stone floor of the hall; and
next morning, their wives and daughters came, clapping their hands, and
crying the coronach, and shrieking, and carried away the dead bodies,
with the pipes playing before them. I could not sleep for six weeks
without starting, and thinking I heard these terrible cries, and saw
the bodies lying on the steps, all stiff and swathed up in their bloody
tartans. But since that time there came a party from the garrison at
Stirling, with a warrant from the Lord Justice-Clerk, or some such
great man, and took away all our arms; and now, how are we to protect
ourselves if they come down in any strength?'
Waverley could not help starting at a story which bore so much
resemblance to one of his own day-dreams. Here was a girl scarce
seventeen, the gentlest of her sex, both in temper and appearance, who
had witnessed with her own eyes such a scene as he had used to conjure
up in his imagination, as only occurring in ancient times, and spoke of
it coolly, as one very likely to recur. He felt at once the impulse of
curiosity, and that slight sense of danger which only serves to heighten
its interest.
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