Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series, vol. 4 - 1819.djvu/73

 obliterated the marks of a very late execution.

As Dalgetty looked on this new object of terror, his principal guide suddenly twitched him by the skirt of his jerkin, and having thus attracted his attention, winked and pointed with his finger to a pole fixed on the stockade, which supported a human head, being that, doubtless, of the late sufferer. There was a leer on the Highlander's face, as he pointed to this ghastly spectacle, which seemed to his fellow-traveller ominous of nothing good.

Dalgetty dismounted from his horse at the gate-way, and Gustavus was taken from him without his being permitted to attend him to the stable according to his custom.

This gave the soldier a pang which the apparatus of death had not conveyed.—"Poor Gustavus," said he to himself, "if anything but good happens to me, I had better have left him at Darnlinvarach than brought him here among these Highland