Red Cap Tales, Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North

by S. R. Crockett; Walter Scott

Not long after Callum Beg had been left behind, and indeed almost as soon as the innkeeper and Edward were fairly on their way, the former suddenly announced that his horse had fallen lame and that they must turn aside to a neighbouring smithy to have the matter attended to.

"And as it is the Fast Day, and the smith a religious man, it may cost your Honour as muckle as sixpence a shoe!" suggested the wily innkeeper, watching Edward's face as he spoke.

For this announcement Edward cared nothing. He would gladly have paid a shilling a nail to be allowed to push forward on his journey with all speed. Accordingly to the smithy of Cairnvreckan they went. The village was in an uproar. The smith, a fierce-looking man, was busy hammering "dogs' heads" for musket-locks, while among the surrounding crowd the names of great Highland chiefs—Clanronald, Glengarry, Lochiel, and that of Vich Ian Vohr himself, were being bandied from mouth to mouth.

Edward soon found himself surrounded by an excited mob, in the midst of which the smith's wife, a wild witchlike woman, was dancing, every now and then casting her child up in the air as high as her arms would reach, singing all the while, and trying to anger the crowd, and especially to infuriate her husband, by the Jacobite songs which she chanted.

At last the smith could stand this provocation no longer. He snatched a red-hot bar of iron from the forge, and rushed at his wife, crying out that he would "thrust it down her throat." Then, finding himself held back by the crowd from executing vengeance on the woman, all his anger turned upon Edward, whom he took to be a Jacobite emissary. For the news which had caused all this stir was that Prince Charles had landed and that the whole Highlands was rallying to his banner.

So fierce and determined was the attack which the angry smith of Cairnvreckan made on Edward that the young man was compelled to draw his pistol in self-defence. And as the crowd threatened him and the smith continued furiously to attack with the red-hot iron, almost unconsciously his finger pressed the trigger. The shot went off, and immediately the smith fell to the ground. Then Edward, borne down by the mob, was for some time in great danger of his life. He was saved at last by the interference of the minister of the parish, a kind and gentle old man, who caused Edward's captors to treat him more tenderly. So that instead of executing vengeance upon the spot as they had proposed, they brought him before the nearest magistrate, who was, indeed, an old military officer, and, in addition, the Laird of the village of Cairnvreckan, one Major Melville by name.

"So fierce and determined was the attack which the angry smith of Cairnvreckan made on Edward that the young man was compelled to draw his pistol in self-defence."

The latter proved to be a stern soldier, so severe in manner that he often became unintentionally unjust. Major Melville found that though the blacksmith's wound proved to be a mere scratch, and though he had to own that the provocation given was a sufficient excuse for Edward's hasty action, yet he must detain the young man prisoner upon the warrant issued against Edward Waverley, which had been sent out by the Supreme Court of Scotland.

Edward, who at once owned to his name, was astonished beyond words to find that not only was he charged with being in the company of actual rebels, such as the Baron of Bradwardine and Vich Ian Vohr, but also with trying to induce his troop of horse to revolt by means of private letters addressed to one of them, Sergeant Houghton, in their barracks at Dundee. Captain Waverley was asserted to have effected this through the medium of a pedlar named Will Ruthven, or Wily Will—whose very name Edward had never heard up to that moment.

As the magistrate's examination proceeded, Waverley was astonished to find that, instead of clearing himself, everything he said, every article he carried about his person, was set down by Major Melville as an additional proof of his complicity with treason. Among these figured Flora's verses, his own presence at the great hunting match among the mountains, his father's and Sir Everard's letters, even the huge manuscripts written by his tutor (of which he had never read six pages)—all were brought forward as so many evidences of his guilt.