And though I read the "Repentance and a Reconciliation" chapter, which makes number Twelve of _Waverley_, to the combatants, I was conscious that I must hasten on to scenes more exciting if I meant to retain the attention of my small but exacting audience. Furthermore, it was beginning to rain. So, hurriedly breaking off the tale, we drove back to Melrose across the green holms of St. Boswells. It was after the hour of tea, and the crowd of visitors had ebbed away from the precincts of the Abbey before the tale was resumed. A flat "throuch" stone sustained the narrator, while the four disposed themselves on the sunny grass, in the various attitudes of severe inattention which youth assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy like that of a story. Only, she was too young to mind letting the tale-teller know it. That made the difference. Above our heads the beautiful ruin mounted, now all red gold in the lights, and purple in the shadows, while round and round, and through and through, from highest tower to lowest arch, the swifts shrieked and swooped. THE SECOND TALE FROM "WAVERLEY" I. THE CATTLE-LIFTING NEXT morning (I continued, looking up for inspiration to the pinnacles of Melrose, cut against the clear sky of evening, as sharply as when "John Morow, master mason," looked upon his finished work and found it very good)--next morning, as Captain Edward Waverley was setting out for his morning walk, he found the castle of Bradwardine by no means the enchanted palace of silence he had first discovered. Milkmaids, bare-legged and wild-haired, ran about distractedly with pails and three-legged stools in their hands, crying, "Lord, guide us!" and "Eh, sirs!" Bailie Macwheeble, mounted on his dumpy, round-barrelled pony, rode hither and thither with half the ragged rascals of the neighbourhood clattering after him. The Baron paced the terrace, every moment glancing angrily up at the Highland hills from under his bushy grey eyebrows. From the byre-lasses and the Bailie, Edward could obtain no satisfactory explanation of the disturbance. He judged it wiser not to seek it from the angry Baron. Within-doors, however, he found Rose, who, though troubled and anxious, replied to his questions readily enough.