--This same law of high treason,' he continued, with astonishing
firmness and composure, 'is one of the blessings, Edward, with
which your free country has accommodated poor old Scotland: her own
jurisprudence, as I have heard, was much milder. But I suppose one day
or other--when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by
its tender mercies--they will blot it from their records, as levelling
them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the
senseless head--they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper
coronet; there would be some satire in that, Edward. I hope they will
set it on the Scotch gate though, that I may look, even after death,
to the blue hills of my own country, which I love so dearly. The Baron
would have added,
MORITUR, ET MORIENS DULCES REMINISCITUR ARGOS.'
A bustle, and the sound of wheels and horses' feet, was now heard in the
courtyard of the Castle. 'As I have told you why you must not follow me,
and these sounds admonish me that my time flies fast, tell me how you
found poor Flora?'
Waverley, with a voice interrupted by suffocating sensations, gave some
account of the state of her mind.
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