The Baron having also retired to give some necessary directions, Waverley seized the opportunity to ask, whether this Fergus, with the unpronounceable name, was the chief thief-taker of the district?
“Thief-taker!” answered Rose, laughing; “he is a gentleman of great honour and consequence, the chieftain of an independent branch of a powerful Highland clan, and is much respected, both for his own power and that of his kith, kin, and allies.”
“And what has he to do with the thieves, then? Is he a magistrate, or in the commission of the peace?” asked Waverley.
“The commission of war rather, if there be such a thing,” said Rose; “for he is a very unquiet neighbour to his unfriends, and keeps a greater following on foot than many that have thrice his estate. As to his connection with the thieves, that I cannot well explain; but the boldest of them will never steal a hoof from anyone that pays blackmail to Vich Ian Vohr.”
“And what is blackmail?”
“A sort of protection-money that Low-Country gentlemen and heritors, lying near the Highlands, pay to some Highland chief, that he may neither do them harm himself, nor suffer it to be done to them by others; and then if your cattle are stolen, you have only to send him word, and he will recover them; or it may be, he will drive away cows from some distant place, where he has a quarrel, and give them to you to make up your loss.”
“And is this sort of Highland Jonathan Wild admitted into society, and called a gentleman?”
“So much so,” said Rose, “that the quarrel between my father and Fergus MacIvor began at a county meeting, where he wanted to take precedence of all the Lowland gentlemen then present, only my father would not suffer it. And then he upbraided my father that he was under his banner, and paid him tribute; and my father was in a towering passion, for Bailie Macwheeble, who manages such things his own way, had contrived to keep this blackmail a secret from him, and passed it in his account for cess-money. And they would have fought; but Fergus MacIvor said, very gallantly, he would never raise his hand against a grey head that was so much respected as my father’s.—O I wish, I wish they had continued friends!”
“And did you ever see this Mr. MacIvor, if that be his name, Miss Bradwardine?”
“No, that is not his name; and he would consider master as a sort of affront, only that you are an Englishman, and know no better. But the Lowlanders call him, like other gentlemen, by the name of his estate, Glennaquoich; and the Highlanders call him Vich Ian Vohr, that is, the son of John the Great; and we upon the braes here call him by both names indifferently.”
“I am afraid I shall never bring my English tongue to call him by either one or other.”
“But he is a very polite, handsome man,” continued Rose; “and his sister Flora is one of the most beautiful and accomplished young ladies in this country; she was bred in a convent in France, and was a great friend of mine before this unhappy dispute. Dear Captain Waverley, try your influence with my father to make matters up. I am sure this is but the beginning of our troubles; for Tully-Veolan has never been a safe or quiet residence when we have been at feud with the Highlanders. When I was a girl about ten, there was a skirmish fought between a party of twenty of them and my father and his servants behind the mains; and the bullets broke several panes in the north windows, they were so near. Three of the Highlanders were killed, and they brought them in wrapped in their plaids, and laid them on the stone floor of the hall; and next morning, their wives and daughters came, clapping their hands, and crying the coronach, and shrieking, and carried away the dead bodies, with the pipes playing before them. I could not sleep for six weeks without starting and thinking I heard these terrible cries, and saw the bodies lying on the steps, all stiff and swathed up in their bloody tartans. But since that time there came a party from the garrison at Stirling, with a warrant from the Lord Justice Clerk, or some such great man, and took away all our arms; and now, how are we to protect ourselves if they come down in any strength?”
Waverley could not help starting at a story which bore so much resemblance to one of his own daydreams. Here was a girl scarce seventeen, the gentlest of her sex, both in temper and appearance, who had witnessed with her own eyes such a scene as he had used to conjure up in his imagination, as only occurring in ancient times, and spoke of it coolly, as one very likely to recur. He felt at once the impulse of curiosity, and that slight sense of danger which only serves to heighten its interest. He might have said with Malvolio, “ ‘I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me!’ I am actually in the land of military and romantic adventures, and it only remains to be seen what will be my own share in them.”
The whole circumstances now detailed concerning the state of the country seemed equally novel and extraordinary. He had indeed often heard of Highland thieves, but had no idea of the systematic mode in which their depredations were conducted; and that the practice was connived at, and even encouraged, by many of the Highland chieftains, who not only found the creaghs, or forays, useful for the purpose of training individuals of their
