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Tom Brown's School Days: Flora

The next morning Evan Dhu Maccombich induces Waverley to visit the Highland mansion of his master, Fergus MacIvor, whose handsome face "resembles a smiling summer's day in which, however, one can detect signs that it may thunder and lighten before evening." His love for his beautiful and accomplished sister, Flora MacIvor, is equaled only by his ambition to restore the exiled Stuart family to the throne.

Fergus entertains Waverley at a picturesque banquet attended by hundreds of the clansmen of MacIvor. After the banquet Flora asks Waverley to meet her in her favorite haunt near a cascade. As Edward approached the waterfall "the sun, now stooping in the west, seemed to add more than human brilliancy to the full expressive darkness of Flora's eyes. Edward thought he had never, even in his wildest dreams, imagined a picture of such exquisite loveliness." Conscious of her charms in this "Eden in the wilderness," Flora sings to him a stirring martial song which she accompanies on a small Scottish harp, the melody blending harmoniously with the sound of the waters of the cataract. Waverley, bewitched by her loveliness, proposes to Flora, who promptly rejects him.

Disappointed, but not discouraged, Waverley gladly accepts an invitation to remain at Fergus MacIvor's mansion for a few days. While attending a stag-hunt he sustains an injury which keeps him in bed for some time. On his recovery he is both astonished and incensed to learn that the colonel of his regiment has reduced him to the ranks for "absence without leave." His anger is aggravated by a letter from his father, who, through a political blunder, has lost a high position in the court of King George. At the same time, too, Rose Bradwardine writes to him that her father, the baron, has been obliged to flee in order to escape arrest for his adherence to the cause of the exiled Stuarts. Despite these apparent acts of injustice Waverley remains loyal to King George and decides to return home. On the way to England, however, he is arrested and charged with desertion and treason. Knowing himself to be innocent, he is mystified at this turn of affairs. What plot has been hatched against him, and by whom? His stupe-faction increases when he is rescued by a band of Highlanders. Who are these Highlanders? And why do they interest themselves in him? These and similar questions perplex his bewildered senses. Wounded during the rescue, he is nursed back to health in a peasant's hut by a young girl who always manages to make her escape whenever he tries to catch a glimpse of her. When his health is restored the Highlanders take him to Edinburgh, where he meets his friends, Fergus MacIvor and the Baron of Bradwardine, among the insurgents who are making an attempt to recover the throne for their gallant leader, the exiled Prince Charles Edward. Waverley now feels compelled to join this army.

Just before enlisting Waverley tries once more to win Flora's love, but is again repulsed. He therefore throws himself heart and soul into the cause of the young prince.

The army is about to engage in its first battle. The sun has just risen. The rocks, and the very sky itself, "resound with the clang of the bagpipes." The mountaineers rouse themselves with the hum and bustle of a multitude of bees, arming and ready to swarm out of their hives.