Waverley by Walter Scott — Read

The Baron's story was short, when divested of the adages and commonplaces, Latin, English, and Scotch, with which his erudition garnished it. He insisted much upon his grief at the loss of Edward and of Glennaquoich, fought the fields of Falkirk and Culloden, and related how, after all was lost in the last battle, he had returned home, under the idea of more easily finding shelter among his own tenants and on his own estate than elsewhere. A party of soldiers had been sent to lay waste his property, for clemency was not the order of the day. Their proceedings, however, were checked by an order from the civil court. The estate, it was found, might not be forfeited to the crown to the prejudice of Malcolm Bradwardine of Inch-Grabbit, the heir-male, whose claim could not be prejudiced by the Baron's attainder, as deriving no right through him, and who, therefore, like other heirs of entail in the same situation, entered upon possession. But, unlike many in similar circumstances, the new laird speedily showed that he intended utterly to exclude his predecessor from all benefit or advantage in the estate, and that it was his purpose to avail himself of the old Baron's evil fortune to the full extent. This was the more ungenerous, as it was generally known that, from a romantic idea of not prejudicing this young man's right as heir-male, the Baron had refrained from settling his estate on his daughter.

This selfish injustice was resented by the country people, who were partial to their old master, and irritated against his successor. In the Baron's own words, "The matter did not coincide with the feelings of the commons of Bradwardine, Mr. Waverley; and the tenants were slack and repugnant in payment of their mails and duties; and when my kinsman came to the village wi' the new factor, Mr. James Howie, to lift the rents, some wanchancy person -- I suspect John Heatherblutter, the auld gamekeeper, that was out wi' me in the year Fifteen -- fired a shot at him in the gloaming, whereby he was so affrighted, that I may say with Tullius In Catilinam, ‘Abiit, evasit, erupit, effugit. ' He fled, sir, as one may say, incontinent to Stirling. And now he hath advertised the estate for sale, being himself the last substitute in the entail. And if I were to lament about sic matters, this would grieve me mair than its passing from my immediate possession, whilk, by the course of nature, must have happened in a few years; whereas now it passes from the lineage that should have possessed it in saecula saeculorum. But God's will be done, humana perpessi sumus. Sir John of Bradwardine -- Black Sir John, as he is called -- who was the common ancestor of our house and the Inch-Grabbits, little thought such a person would have sprung from his loins. Meantime, he has accused me to some of the primates, the rulers for the time, as if I were a cutthroat, and an abettor of bravoes and assassinates and coupe-jarrets. And they have sent soldiers here to abide on the estate, and hunt me like a partridge upon the mountains, as Scripture says of good King David, or like our valiant Sir William Wallace -- not that I bring myself into comparison with either. I thought, when I heard you at the door, they had driven the auld deer to his den at last; and so I e'en proposed to die at bay, like a buck of the first head. But now, Janet, canna ye gie us something for supper?"