A CONFIDANT Waverley awoke in the morning, from troubled dreams and unrefreshing slumbers, to a full consciousness of the horrors of his situation.

How it might terminate he knew not.

He might be delivered up to military law, which, in the midst of civil war, was not likely to be scrupulous in the choice of its victims, or the quality of the evidence.

Nor did he feel much more comfortable at the thoughts of a trial before a Scottish court of justice, where he knew the laws and forms differed in many respects from those of England, and had been taught to believe, however erroneously, that the liberty and rights of the subject were less carefully protected.

A sentiment of bitterness rose in his mind against the Government, which he considered as the cause of his embarrassment and peril, and he cursed internally his scrupulous rejection of Mac-Ivor's invitation to accompany him to the field.
'Why did not I,' he said to himself, 'like other men of honour, take the earliest opportunity to welcome to Britain the descendant of her ancient kings, and lineal heir of her throne?
Why did not I Unthread the rude eye of rebellion, And welcome home again discarded faith, Seek out Prince Charles, and fall before his feet?
All that has been recorded of excellence and worth in the house of Waverley has been founded upon their loyal faith to the house of Stuart.
From the interpretation which this Scotch magistrate has put upon the letters of my uncle and father, it is plain that I ought to have understood them as marshalling me to the course of my ancestors; and it has been my gross dullness, joined to the obscurity of expression which they adopted for the sake of security, that has confounded my judgement.
Had I yielded to the first generous impulse of indignation when I learned that my honour was practised upon, how different had been my present situation! I had then been free and in arms, fighting, like my forefathers, for love, for loyalty, and for fame.