Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series - 1819.djvu/174

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164
TALES OF MY LANDLORD.
CHAPTER II.

His mother could for him as cradle set
Her husband's rusty iron corselet;
Whose jangling sound could hush her babe to rest,
That never plained of his uneasy nest;
Then did he dream of dreary wars at hand,
And woke, and fought, and won, ere he could stand.

Hall's Satires.


It was towards the close of a summer's evening, during the anxious period which we have commemorated, that a young gentleman of quality, well mounted and armed, and accompanied by two servants, one of whom led a sumpter horse, rode slowly up one of those steep passes, by which the Highlands are accessible from the Lowlands of Perthshire. Their course had lain for some time along the banks of a lake, whose deep waters reflected the crimson beams of