The Baron, meanwhile, paced the room in silent indignation, and at length
fixing his eye upon an old portrait, whose person was clad in armour, and
whose features glared grimly out of a huge bush of hair, part of which
descended from his head to his shoulders, and part from his chin and
upper-lip to his breast-plate,--'That gentleman, Captain Waverley, my
grandsire,' he said, 'with two hundred horse,--whom he levied within his
own bounds, discomfited and put to the rout more than five hundred of
these Highland reivers, who have been ever lapis offensionis et petra
scandali, a stumbling-block and a rock of offence, to the Lowland
vicinage--he discomfited them, I say, when they had the temerity to
descend to harry this country, in the time of the civil dissensions, in
the year of grace sixteen hundred forty and two. And now, sir, I, his
grandson, am thus used at such unworthy hands.'
Here there was an awful pause; after which all the company, as is usual
in cases of difficulty, began to give separate and inconsistent counsel.
Alexander ab Alexandro proposed they should send some one to compound
with the Caterans, who would readily, he said, give up their prey for a
dollar a head.
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