He therefore left the direct road, and sweeping considerably to the southward, so as to keep out of the range of the cannon, approached the ancient palace of Holyrood, without having entered the walls of the city.

He then drew up his men in front of that venerable pile, and delivered Waverley to the custody of a guard of Highlanders, whose officer conducted him into the interior of the building.
A long, low, and ill-proportioned gallery, hung with pictures, affirmed to be the portraits of kings, who, if they ever flourished at all, lived several hundred years before the invention of painting in oil colours, served as a sort of guard-chamber, or vestibule, to the apartments which the adventurous Charles Edward now occupied in the palace of his ancestors.

Officers, both in the Highland and Lowland garb, passed and repassed in haste, or loitered in the hall, as if waiting for orders.
Secretaries were engaged in making out passes, musters, and returns.
All seemed busy, and earnestly intent upon something of importance; but Waverley was suffered to remain seated in the recess of a window, unnoticed by any one, in anxious reflection upon the crisis of his fate, which seemed now rapidly approaching..