A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE.
There was a moment's pause when the whole party had got out of the hut; and the Highlander who assumed the command and who, in Waverley's awakened recollection, seemed to be the same tall figure who had acted as Donald Bean Lean's lieutenant, by whispers and signs imposed the strictest silence.
He delivered to Edward a sword and steel pistol, and, pointing up the tract, laid his hand on the hilt of his own claymore, as if to make him sensible they might have occasion to use force to make good their passage.He then placed himself at the head of the party, who moved up the pathway in single or Indian file, Waverley being placed nearest to their leader.He moved with great precaution, as if to avoid giving any alarm, and halted as soon as he came to the verge of the ascent.
Waverley was soon sensible of the reason, for he heard at no great distance an English sentinel call out ``All's well.'' The heavy sound sunk on the night-wind down the woody glen, and was answered by the echoes of its banks.A second, third, and fourth time, the signal was repeated, fainter and fainter, as if at a greater and greater distance.It was obvious that a party of soldiers were near, and upon their guard, though not sufficiently so to detect men skilful in every art of predatory warfare, like those with whom he now watched their ineffectual precautions.
When these sounds had died upon the silence of the night, the Highlanders began their march swiftly, yet with the most cautious silence.Waverley had little time, or indeed disposition, for observation, and could only discern that they passed at some distance from a large building, in the windows of which a light or two yet seemed to twinkle.A little farther on, the leading Highlander snuffed the wind like a setting spaniel, and then made a signal to his party again to halt.He stooped down upon all-fours, wrapped up in his plaid, so as to be scarce distinguishable from the heathy ground on which he moved, and advanced in this posture to reconnoitre.In a short time he returned, and dismissed his attendants excepting one; and, intimating to Waverley, that he must imitate his cautious mode of proceeding, all three crept forward on hands and knees.
After proceeding a greater way in this inconvenient manner than was at all comfortable to his knees and shins, Waverley perceived the smell of smoke, which probably had been much sooner distinguished by the more acute nasal organs of his guide.It proceeded from the corner of a low and ruinous sheep-fold, the walls of which were made of loose stones, as is usual in Scotland.Close by this low wall the Highlander guided Waverley, and, in order probably to make him sensible of his danger, or perhaps to obtain the full credit of his own dexterity, he intimated to him, by sign and example, that he might raise his head so as to peep into the sheep-fold.Waverley did so, and beheld an outpost of four or five soldiers lying by their watch-fire.They were all asleep, except the sentinel, who paced backwards and forwards with his firelock on his shoulder, which glanced red in the, light of the fire as he crossed and recrossed before it in his short walk, casting his eye frequently to that part of the heavens from which the moon, hitherto obscured by mist, seemed now about to make her appearance.
In the course of a minute or two, by one of those sudden changes of atmosphere incident to a mountainous country, a breeze arose, and swept before it the clouds which had covered the horizon, and the night planet poured her full effulgence upon a wide and blighted heath, skirted indeed with copse-wood and stunted trees in the quarter from which they had come, but open and bare to the observation of the sentinel in that to which their course tended.The wall of the sheep-fold, indeed, concealed them as they lay, but any advance beyond its shelter seemed impossible without certain discovery.
The Highlander eyed the blue vault, but far from blessing the useful light with Homer's or rather Pope's benighted peasant, he muttered a Gaelic curse upon the unseasonable splendour of _Mac-Farlane's buat_ (_i.e.,_ lantern.)<*> He looked * Note P.Mac-Farlane's Lantern.<! p250>