'They're no there,'
said Alick Polwarth, who guessed the cause of the dubious look which
Waverley cast backward, and who, with the vulgar appetite for the
horrible, was master of each detail of the butchery--'the heads are ower
the Scotch yate, as they ca' it. It's a great pity of Evan Dhu, who was a
very weel-meaning, good-natured man, to be a Hielandman; and indeed so
was the Laird o' Glennaquoich too, for that matter, when he wasna in ane
o' his tirrivies.'
CHAPTER XLI
DULCE DOMUM
The impression of horror with which Waverley left Carlisle softened by
degrees into melancholy, a gradation which was accelerated by the painful
yet soothing task of writing to Rose; and, while he could not suppress
his own feelings of the calamity, he endeavoured to place it in a light
which might grieve her without shocking her imagination. The picture
which he drew for her benefit he gradually familiarised to his own mind,
and his next letters were more cheerful, and referred to the prospects of
peace and happiness which lay before them. Yet, though his first horrible
sensations had sunk into melancholy, Edward had reached his native
country before he could, as usual on former occasions, look round for
enjoyment upon the face of nature.
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