It is enough for our purpose
to say, that all Scotland was indignant at the terms on which their
legislature had surrendered their national independence. The general
resentment led to the strangest leagues and to the wildest plans. The
Cameronians were about to take arms for the restoration of the house of
Stewart, whom they regarded, with justice, as their oppressors; and
the intrigues of the period presented the strange picture of papists,
prelatists, and presbyterians, caballing among themselves against the
English government, out of a common feeling that their country had been
treated with injustice. The fermentation was universal; and, as the
population of Scotland had been generally trained to arms, under the act
of security, they were not indifferently prepared for war, and waited
but the declaration of some of the nobility to break out into open
hostility. It was at this period of public confusion that our story
opens.
The cleugh, or wild ravine, into which Hobbie Elliot had followed the
game, was already far behind him, and he was considerably advanced on
his return homeward, when the night began to close upon him.
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