If I am capable of the cowardice and treachery your charge burdens me with, I am not worthy to be believed in any reply I can make to you.

If I am not deserving of your suspicion--and God and my own conscience bear evidence with me that it is so--then I do not see why I should, by my candour, lend my accusers arms against my innocence.

There is no reason I should answer a word more, and I am determined to abide by this resolution.' And again he resumed his posture of sullen and determined silence.
'Allow me,' said the magistrate, 'to remind you of one reason that may suggest the propriety of a candid and open confession.

The inexperience of youth, Mr.Waverley, lays it open to the plans of the more designing and artful; and one of your friends at least--I mean Mac-Ivor of Glennaquoich--ranks high in the latter class, as, from your apparent ingenuousness, youth, and unacquaintance with the manners of the Highlands, I should be disposed to place you among the former.

In such a case, a false step, or error like yours, which I shall be happy to consider as involuntary, may be atoned for, and I would willingly act as intercessor.