'None, certainly; your loyalty and character are my warrant. But with
what view do you make the request?'
'Simply,' replied Mr. Morton, 'to make the experiment whether he may not
be brought to communicate to me some circumstances which may hereafter
be useful to alleviate, if not to exculpate his conduct.'
The friends now parted and retired to rest, each filled with the most
anxious reflections on the state of the country.
CHAPTER XXXIII
A CONFIDANT
Waverley awoke in the morning, from troubled dreams and unrefreshing
slumbers, to a full consciousness of the horrors of his situation. How
it might terminate he knew not. He might be delivered up to military
law, which, in the midst of civil war, was not likely to be scrupulous
in the choice of its victims, or the quality of the evidence. Nor did he
feel much more comfortable at the thoughts of a trial before a Scottish
court of justice, where he knew the laws and forms differed in many
respects from those of England, and had been taught to believe, however
erroneously, that the liberty and rights of the subject were less
carefully protected. A sentiment of bitterness rose in his mind against
the Government, which he considered as the cause of his embarrassment
and peril, and he cursed internally his scrupulous rejection of
Mac-Ivor's invitation to accompany him to the field.
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