The other he
proposed was, that in the eagerness to hear and comprehend commands
issued through such an indistinct medium in his own presence, the
thoughts of the soldiers in both corps might get a current different
from the angry channel in which they were flowing at the time.
Charles Edward was no sooner left with the Chieftain and Waverley, the
rest of his attendants being at some distance, than he said, 'If I owed
less to your disinterested friendship, I could be most seriously angry
with both of you for this very extraordinary and causeless broil, at a
moment when my father's service so decidedly demands the most perfect
unanimity. But the worst of my situation is, that my very best friends
hold they have liberty to ruin themselves, as well as the cause they are
engaged in, upon the slightest caprice.'
Both the young men protested their resolution to submit every difference
to his arbitration. 'Indeed,' said Edward, 'I hardly know of what I am
accused. I sought Colonel Mac-Ivor merely to mention to him that I had
narrowly escaped assassination at the hand of his immediate dependent--a
dastardly revenge, which I knew him to be incapable of authorizing.
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