Excerpt: CHAPTER VI. A VOLUNTEER SIXTY YEAKS SINCE. On hearing the unwelcome sound of the drum, Major Melville hastily opened a sashed door and stepped out upon a sort of terrace which divided his house from the high-road from which the martial music proceeded. Waverley and his new friend followed him, though probably he would have dispensed with their attendance. They soon recognized in solemn march, first, the performer upon the drum; secondly, a large flag of four compartments, on which were inscribed the words, CoveNant, Kirk, King, Kingdoms. The person who was honoured with this charge was followed by the commander of the party, -- a thin, dark, rigid- looking man about sixty years old. The spiritual pride which in mine Host of the Candlestick mantled in a sort of supercilious hypocrisy, was in this man's face elevated and yet darkened by genuine and uudoubting fanaticism. It was impossible to behold him without imagination placing him in some strange crisis where religious zeal was the ruling principle. A martyr at the stake, a soldier in the field, a lonely and banished wanderer consoled by the intensity and supposed purity of his faith under every earthly privation, perhaps a persecuting inquisitor, as terrific in power as unyielding in adversity, -- any of these seemed congenial characters to this personage. With these high traits of energy there was something in the affected precision and solemnit...

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