'YE'LL stop ony gentleman that's the Prince's freend ?' for she too, though with other feelings, had adopted the general opinion respecting Waverley.

'I daur ye to touch him,' spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with claws which a vulture might have envied.

'I'll set my ten commandments in the face o' the first loon that lays a finger on him.' 'Gae hame, gudewife,' quoth the farmer aforesaid; 'it wad better set you to be nursing the gudeman's bairns than to be deaving us here.' 'HIS bairns ?' retorted the Amazon, regarding her husband with a grin of ineffable contempt--'HIS bairns! O gin ye were dead, gudeman, And a green turf on your head, gudeman! Then I wad ware my widowhood Upon a ranting Highlandman' This canticle, which excited a suppressed titter among the younger part of the audience, totally overcame the patience of the taunted man of the anvil.

'Deil be in me but I'll put this het gad down her throat!' cried he in an ecstasy of wrath, snatching a bar from the forge; and he might have executed his threat, had he not been withheld by a part of the mob, while the rest endeavoured to force the termagant out of his presence.
Waverley meditated a retreat in the confusion, but his horse was nowhere to be seen.

At length he observed at some distance his faithful attendant, Ebenezer, who, as soon as he had perceived the turn matters were likely to take, had withdrawn both horses from the press, and, mounted on the one and holding the other, answered the loud and repeated calls of Waverley for his horse.