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Tom Brown's School Days: Highland

LET us for a few thrilling minutes transport ourselves to Scotland in 1745, when its Highland forests teemed with the caves of robbers and its moors resounded with the shouting of the chieftains as they battled to restore the exiled House of Stuart to the throne, then occupied by King George II. Are you ready? Then let us join the handsome young English officer, Edward Waverley. He is about to visit the cavern of the Highland robber, Donald Bean Lean, little dreaming of the maze of adventures into which this visit will lead him. Waverley is enjoying a furlough at the Scottish Lowland mansion of the eccentric, garrulous, and lovable Baron of Bradwardine. The baron's seventeen-year-old daughter, Rose Bradwardine, "with a profusion of hair of paly gold, and a skin like the snow of her own mountains in whiteness," has fallen in love with Waverley, who, however, finds her tender attentions too tame for his poetic imagination. It is his ambition to explore the wild regions of romance, and fortunately an opportunity presents itself. The baron's cattle, having been stolen by the robber, Donald Bean Lean, are restored through the interposition of the baron's friends, the powerful Highland chieftain, Fergus MacIvor. The chieftain's lieutenant, Evan Dhu Mac-combich, invites Waverley to visit Donald Bean Lean's den. After a journey through Lowland glen and brae, over Highland lake and forest, they arrived at the cavern, where Waverley spends an interesting night in the presence of Donald Bean Lean and his company of robbers, who come singly or in groups, each cutting with his dirk a slice of flesh from a carcass suspended in the cave, broiling the steak and washing it down with draughts of undiluted whisky. A buxom Highland lass, the robber's daughter, takes care of this romantic den.