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"I tell ye, Bailie Middleburgh," retorted David Deans, "if ye be a bailie, as there is little honour in being ane in these evil days I tell ye, I heard the gracious Saunders Peden I wotna whan it was; but it was in killing time, when the plowers were drawing alang their furrows on the back of the Kirk of Scotland I heard him tell his hearers, gude and waled Christians they were too, that some o' them wad greet mair for a bit drowned calf or stirk than for a' the defections and oppressions of the day; and that they were some o' them thinking o' ae thing, some o' anither, and there was Lady Hundleslope thinking o' greeting Jock at the fireside!
It was with this weapon, as one may read in Scrope's Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing, that Tam Purdie Sir Walter's Purdie when a young man captured that "muckle kipper" that seemed to him to be the "verra de'il himsel'," so big was he. "Odd! my verra heart lap to my mouth whan I gat the glisk o' something mair like a red stirk than ought else muve off the redd. I fand my hair creep on my heid.
In the long vague dialogues she held in her mind, often with imaginary, often with unrealised interlocutors, Archie, if he were referred to at all, came in for savage handling. He was described as "looking like a stirk," "staring like a caulf," "a face like a ghaist's." "Do you call that manners?" she said; or, "I soon put him in his place." "'Miss Christina, if you please, Mr.
"And leave us neither stirk nor stot," said the youngest brother, who now entered, "nor sheep nor lamb, nor aught that eats grass and corn." "If they had ony quarrel wi' us," said Harry, the second brother, "were we na ready to have fought it out?
"Silver he left me in plenty, Hamish; but the best of his comfort was that you were well, and would see me soon. But beware of MacPhadraick, my son; for when he called himself the friend of your father, he better loved the most worthless stirk in his herd than he did the life-blood of MacTavish Mhor.
'No he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cottar, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird, is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon. 'But what can this end in, were he taken in such an appropriation?
The apprehension of Will Armstrong made a great noise throughout all Liddesdale, producing, to the class of victims, joy, and to the class of spoilers, great dismay; but none wondered more at the impertinence and presumption of the government authorities in attempting thus to dislocate the old Tory principle of "might makes right," than Margaret Elliot; who, as she sat in her turret of Gilnockie, alternately wept and cursed for the fate of her "winsome Will," and, no doubt, there was in the projected condemnation and execution of a man six feet five inches high, with a face like an Adonis, shoulders like a Milo, the speed of Mercury, the boldness of a lion, and more than the generosity of that noble animal, for the crime of stealing a stirk, something that was very apt to rouse, even in those who loved him not so well as did Margaret, feelings of sympathy for his fate, and indignation against his oppressors.
The idea of composition, direct or implied, was absolutely ignominious; that of Waverley only showed that he did not understand the state of the country, and of the political parties which divided it; and, standing matters as they did with Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr, the Baron would make no concession to him, were it, he said, 'to procure restitution in integrum of every stirk and stot that the chief, his forefathers, and his clan, had stolen since the days of Malcolm Canmore.
It was a full and satisfying paper, with its agricultural advertisements, its roups, reported with an accuracy of detail that condescended on a solitary stirk, its local intelligence, its facetious anecdotes. Through this familiar country the good man found his own way at a rate which allowed him to complete the survey in six days.
'No; he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cotter, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon. 'But what can this end in, were he taken in such an appropriation?
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