Читать книгу Red Cap Tales, Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North - Вальтер Скотт - Страница 14

This time the children were frankly delighted.

"It's just like Kidnapped, father," cried Hugh John, more truly than he dreamed of, "there's the Flight through the Heather, you remember, and the tall man is Allan Breck, heading off the soldiers after the Red Fox was shot. There was a sentinel that whistled, too—Allan heard him when he was fishing, and learned the tune—oh, and a lot of things the same!"

"I like the part best where Alice Bean gives him the papers," said Sweetheart; "perhaps she was in love with him, too."

"Pshaw!" cried Toady Lion; "much good that did him. He never even got them looked at. But it was a pity that he did not get a chance at a King George soldier with that lovely sword and steel pistol. The Highlanders had all the luck."

"I would have banged it off anyway," declared Hugh John; "fancy carrying a pistol like that all the way, scouting and going Indian file, and never getting a shot at anybody!"

"What I want to know," said Sweetheart, dreamily, "is why they all thought Edward a traitor. I believe the papers that Alice Bean Lean put in his bag would reveal the secret, if Waverley only had time to read them."

"Him," said Sir Toady, naturally suspicious of all girls' heroes, "why, he's always falling down and getting put to bed. Then somebody has to nurse him. Why doesn't he go out and fight, like Fergus Mac-Ivor? Then perhaps Flora would have him; though what he wanted her for—a girl—I don't know. She could only play harps and—make poetry."

So with this bitter scorn for the liberal arts, they all rushed off to enact the whole story, the tale-teller consenting, as occasion required, to take the parts of the wounded smith, the stern judge, or the Cameronian Captain. Hugh John hectored insufferably as Waverley. Sir Toady scouted and stalked as the tall Highlander, whom he refused to regard as anybody but Allan Breck. Sweetheart moved gently about as Alice Bean—preparing breakfast was quite in her line—while Maid Margaret, wildly excited, ran hither and thither as a sort of impartial chorus, warning all and sundry of the movements of the enemy.

I saw her last, seated on a knoll and calling out "Bang" at the pitch of her voice. She was, she explained, nothing less imposing than the castle of Edinburgh itself, cannonading the ranks of the Pretender. While far away, upon wooden chargers, Balmawhapple's cavalry curvetted on the slopes of Arthur's Seat and cracked vain pistols at the frowning fortress. There was, in fact, all through the afternoon, a great deal of imagination loose in our neighbourhood. And even far into the gloaming sounds of battle, boastful recriminations, the clash of swords, the trample and rally of the heavy charge, even the cries of the genuinely wounded, came fitfully from this corner and that of the wide shrubberies.

And when all was over, as they sat reunited, Black Hanoverian and White Cockade, victor and vanquished, in the kindly truce of the supper-table, Hugh John delivered his verdict.

"That's the best tale you have told us yet. Every man of us needed to have sticking-plaster put on when we came in—even Sweetheart!"

Than which, of course, nothing could have been more satisfactory.