' He
said this with a sort of smile.
'How!' answered Edward,' can you advise me to desert the expedition in
which we are all embarked?'
'Embarked?' said Fergus; 'the vessel is going to pieces, and it is full
time for all who can, to get into the long-boat and leave her.'
'Why, what will other gentlemen do?' answered Waverley, 'and why did the
Highland chiefs consent to this retreat, if it is so ruinous?'
'Oh,' replied Mac-Ivor, 'they think that, as on former occasions, the
heading, hanging, and forfeiting, will chiefly fall to the lot of the
Lowland gentry; that they will be left secure in their poverty and their
fastnesses, there, according to their proverb, "to listen to the wind
upon the hill till the waters abate." But they will be disappointed;
they have been too often troublesome to be so repeatedly passed over,
and this time John Bull has been too heartily frightened to recover his
good humour for some time. The Hanoverian ministers always deserved
to be hanged for rascals; but now, if they get the power in their
hands,--as, sooner or later, they must, since there is neither rising
in England nor assistance from France,--they will deserve the gallows as
fools, if they leave a single clan in the Highlands in a situation to
be again troublesome to Government.
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