Waverley Part 10

'Well, Fergus, there is no disputing with you; but I would all this may end well.'

'Devoutly prayed, my dear and prophetic sister, and the best way in the world to close a dubious argument. But hear ye not the pipes, Captain Waverley? Perhaps you will like better to dance to them in the hall than to be deafened with their harmony without taking part in the exercise they invite us to.'

Waverley took Flora's hand. The dance, song, and merry-making proceeded, and closed the day's entertainment at the castle of Vich Ian Vohr. Edward at length retired, his mind agitated by a variety of new and conflicting feelings, which detained him from rest for some time, in that not unpleasing state of mind in which fancy takes the helm, and the soul rather drifts pa.s.sively along with the rapid and confused tide of reflections than exerts itself to encounter, systematise, or examine them. At a late hour he fell asleep, and dreamed of Flora Mac-Ivor.

CHAPTER XXIV

A STAG-HUNT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Shall this be a long or a short chapter? This is a question in which you, gentle reader, have no vote, however much you may be interested in the consequences; just as you may (like myself) probably have nothing to do with the imposing a new tax, excepting the trifling circ.u.mstance of being obliged to pay it. More happy surely in the present case, since, though it lies within my arbitrary power to extend my materials as I think proper, I cannot call you into Exchequer if you do not think proper to read my narrative. Let me therefore consider. It is true that the annals and doc.u.ments in my hands say but little of this Highland chase; but then I can find copious materials for description elsewhere. There is old Lindsay of Pitscottie ready at my elbow, with his Athole hunting, and his 'lofted and joisted palace of green timber; with all kind of drink to be had in burgh and land, as ale, beer, wine, muscadel, malvaise, hippocras, and aquavitae; with wheat-bread, main-bread, ginge-bread, beef, mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge, plover, duck, drake, brisselc.o.c.k, p.a.w.nies, black-c.o.c.k, muir-fowl, and capercailzies'; not forgetting the 'costly bedding, vaiselle, and napry,' and least of all the 'excelling stewards, cunning baxters, excellent cooks, and pottingars, with confections and drugs for the desserts.' Besides the particulars which may be thence gleaned for this Highland feast (the splendour of which induced the Pope's legate to dissent from an opinion which he had hitherto held, that Scotland, namely, was the-the-the latter end of the world)-besides these, might I not illuminate my pages with Taylor the Water Poet's hunting in the Braes of Mar, where,-

Through heather, mosse,'mong frogs, and bogs, and fogs, 'Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-batter'd hills, Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs, Where two hours' hunting fourscore fat deer kills.

Lowland, your sports are low as is your seat; The Highland games and minds are high and great?

But without further tyranny over my readers, or display of the extent of my own reading, I shall content myself with borrowing a single incident from the memorable hunting at Lude, commemorated in the ingenious Mr. Gunn's essay on the Caledonian Harp, and so proceed in my story with all the brevity that my natural style of composition, partaking of what scholars call the periphrastic and ambagitory, and the vulgar the circ.u.mbendibus, will permit me.

The solemn hunting was delayed, from various causes, for about three weeks. The interval was spent by Waverley with great satisfaction at Glennaquoich; for the impression which Flora had made on his mind at their first meeting grew daily stronger. She was precisely the character to fascinate a youth of romantic imagination. Her manners, her language, her talents for poetry and music, gave additional and varied influence to her eminent personal charms. Even in her hours of gaiety she was in his fancy exalted above the ordinary daughters of Eve, and seemed only to stoop for an instant to those topics of amus.e.m.e.nt and gallantry which others appear to live for. In the neighbourhood of this enchantress, while sport consumed the morning and music and the dance led on the hours of evening, Waverley became daily more delighted with his hospitable landlord, and more enamoured of his bewitching sister.

At length the period fixed for the grand hunting arrived, and Waverley and the Chieftain departed for the place of rendezvous, which was a day's journey to the northward of Glennaquoich. Fergus was attended on this occasion by about three hundred of his clan, well armed and accoutred in their best fas.h.i.+on. Waverley complied so far with the custom of the country as to adopt the trews (he could not be reconciled to the kilt), brogues, and bonnet, as the fittest dress for the exercise in which he was to be engaged, and which least exposed him to be stared at as a stranger when they should reach the place of rendezvous. They found on the spot appointed several powerful Chiefs, to all of whom Waverley was formally presented, and by all cordially received. Their va.s.sals and clansmen, a part of whose feudal duty it was to attend on these parties, appeared in such numbers as amounted to a small army. These active a.s.sistants spread through the country far and near, forming a circle, technically called the tinchel, which, gradually closing, drove the deer in herds together towards the glen where the Chiefs and princ.i.p.al sportsmen lay in wait for them. In the meanwhile these distinguished personages bivouacked among the flowery heath, wrapped up in their plaids, a mode of pa.s.sing a summer's night which Waverley found by no means unpleasant.

For many hours after sunrise the mountain ridges and pa.s.ses retained their ordinary appearance of silence and solitude, and the Chiefs, with their followers, amused themselves with various pastimes, in which the joys of the sh.e.l.l, as Ossian has it, were not forgotten. 'Others apart sate on a hill retired,' probably as deeply engaged in the discussion of politics and news as Milton's spirits in metaphysical disquisition. At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard. Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through copses, wading brooks, and traversing thickets, approached more and more near to each other, and compelled the astonished deer, with the other wild animals that fled before them, into a narrower circuit. Every now and then the report of muskets was heard, repeated by a thousand echoes. The baying of the dogs was soon added to the chorus, which grew ever louder and more loud. At length the advanced parties of the deer began to show themselves; and as the stragglers came bounding down the pa.s.s by two or three at a time, the Chiefs showed their skill by distinguis.h.i.+ng the fattest deer, and their dexterity in bringing them down with their guns. Fergus exhibited remarkable address, and Edward was also so fortunate as to attract the notice and applause of the sportsmen.

But now the main body of the deer appeared at the head of the glen, compelled into a very narrow compa.s.s, and presenting such a formidable phalanx that their antlers appeared at a distance, over the ridge of the steep pa.s.s, like a leafless grove. Their number was very great, and from a desperate stand which they made, with the tallest of the red-deer stags arranged in front, in a sort of battle-array, gazing on the group which barred their pa.s.sage down the glen, the more experienced sportsmen began to augur danger. The work of destruction, however, now commenced on all sides. Dogs and hunters were at work, and muskets and fusees resounded from every quarter. The deer, driven to desperation, made at length a fearful charge right upon the spot where the more distinguished sportsmen had taken their stand. The word was given in Gaelic to fling themselves upon their faces; but Waverley, on whose English ears the signal was lost, had almost fallen a sacrifice to his ignorance of the ancient language in which it was communicated. Fergus, observing his danger, sprung up and pulled him with violence to the ground, just as the whole herd broke down upon them. The tide being absolutely irresistible, and wounds from a stag's horn highly dangerous, the activity of the Chieftain may be considered, on this occasion, as having saved his guest's life. He detained him with a firm grasp until the whole herd of deer had fairly run over them. Waverley then attempted to rise, but found that he had suffered several very severe contusions, and, upon a further examination, discovered that he had sprained his ankle violently.

[Footnote: The thrust from the tynes, or branches, of the stag's horns was accounted far more dangerous than those of the boar's tusk:-

If thou be hurt with horn of stag, it brings thee to thy bier, But barber's hand shall boar's hurt heal, thereof have thou no fear.]

This checked the mirth of the meeting, although the Highlanders, accustomed to such incidents, and prepared for them, had suffered no harm themselves. A wigwam was erected almost in an instant, where Edward was deposited on a couch of heather. The surgeon, or he who a.s.sumed the office, appeared to unite the characters of a leech and a conjuror. He was an old smoke-dried Highlander, wearing a venerable grey beard, and having for his sole garment a tartan frock, the skirts of which descended to the knee, and, being undivided in front, made the vestment serve at once for doublet and breeches. [Footnote: This garb, which resembled the dress often put on children in Scotland, called a polonie (i. e. polonaise), is a very ancient modification of the Highland garb. It was, in fact, the hauberk or s.h.i.+rt of mail, only composed of cloth instead of rings of armour.] He observed great ceremony in approaching Edward; and though our hero was writhing with pain, would not proceed to any operation which might a.s.suage it until he had perambulated his couch three times, moving from east to west, according to the course of the sun. This, which was called making the deasil, [Footnote: Old Highlanders will still make the deasil around those whom they wish well to. To go round a person in the opposite direction, or withers.h.i.+ns (German wider-s.h.i.+ns), is unlucky, and a sort of incantation.] both the leech and the a.s.sistants seemed to consider as a matter of the last importance to the accomplishment of a cure; and Waverley, whom pain rendered incapable of expostulation, and who indeed saw no chance of its being attended to, submitted in silence.

After this ceremony was duly performed, the old Esculapius let his patient's blood with a cupping-gla.s.s with great dexterity, and proceeded, muttering all the while to himself in Gaelic, to boil on the fire certain herbs, with which he compounded an embrocation. He then fomented the parts which had sustained injury, never failing to murmur prayers or spells, which of the two Waverley could not distinguish, as his ear only caught the words Gaspar-Melchior-Balthazar-max-prax-fax, and similar gibberish. The fomentation had a speedy effect in alleviating the pain and swelling, which our hero imputed to the virtue of the herbs or the effect of the chafing, but which was by the bystanders unanimously ascribed to the spells with which the operation had been accompanied. Edward was given to understand that not one of the ingredients had been gathered except during the full moon, and that the herbalist had, while collecting them, uniformly recited a charm, which in English ran thus:-

Hail to thee, them holy herb, That sprung on holy ground!

All in the Mount Olivet First wert thou found.

Thou art boot for many a bruise, And healest many a wound; In our Lady's blessed name, I take thee from the ground.

[Footnote: This metrical spell, or something very like it, is preserved by Reginald Scott in his work on Witchcraft.]

Edward observed with some surprise that even Fergus, notwithstanding his knowledge and education, seemed to fall in with the superst.i.tious ideas of his countrymen, either because he deemed it impolitic to affect scepticism on a matter of general belief, or more probably because, ike most men who do not think deeply or accurately on such subjects, he had in his mind a reserve of superst.i.tion which balanced the freedom of his expressions and practice upon other occasions. Waverley made no commentary, therefore, on the manner of the treatment, but rewarded the professor of medicine with a liberality beyond the utmost conception of his wildest hopes. He uttered on the occasion so many incoherent blessings in Gaelic and English that Mac-Ivor, rather scandalised at the excess of his acknowledgments, cut them short by exclaiming, Ceud mile mhalloich ort! i.e. 'A hundred thousand curses on you!' and so pushed the helper of men out of the cabin.

After Waverley was left alone, the exhaustion of pain and fatigue -for the whole day's exercise had been severe-threw him into a profound, but yet a feverish sleep, which he chiefly owed to an opiate draught administered by the old Highlander from some decoction of herbs in his pharmacopoeia.

Early the next morning, the purpose of their meeting being over, and their sports damped by the untoward accident, in which Fergus and all his friends expressed the greatest sympathy, it became a question how to dispose of the disabled sportsman. This was settled by Mac-Ivor, who had a litter prepared, of 'birch and hazel-grey,'

[FOOTNOTE:

On the morrow they made their biers Of birch and hazel grey. Chevy Chase.]

which was borne by his people with such caution and dexterity as renders it not improbable that they may have been the ancestors of some of those st.u.r.dy Gael who have now the happiness to transport the belles of Edinburgh in their sedan-chairs to ten routs in one evening. When Edward was elevated upon their shoulders he could not help being gratified with the romantic effect produced by the breaking up of this sylvan camp. [Footnote: See Note 25.]

The various tribes a.s.sembled, each at the pibroch of their native clan, and each headed by their patriarchal ruler. Some, who had already begun to retire, were seen winding up the hills, or descending the pa.s.ses which led to the scene of action, the sound of their bagpipes dying upon the ear. Others made still a moving picture upon the narrow plain, forming various changeful groups, their feathers and loose plaids waving in the morning breeze, and their arms glittering in the rising sun. Most of the Chiefs came to take farewell of Waverley, and to express their anxious hope they might again, and speedily, meet; but the care of Fergus abridged the ceremony of taking leave. At length, his own men being completely a.s.sembled and mustered, Mac-Ivor commenced his march, but not towards the quarter from which they had come. He gave Edward to understand that the greater part of his followers now on the field were bound on a distant expedition, and that when he had deposited him in the house of a gentleman, who he was sure would pay him every attention, he himself should be under the necessity of accompanying them the greater part of the way, but would lose no time in rejoining his friend.

Waverley was rather surprised that Fergus had not mentioned this ulterior destination when they set out upon the hunting-party; but his situation did not admit of many interrogatories. The greater part of the clansmen went forward under the guidance of old Ballenkeiroch and Evan Dhu Maccomb.i.+.c.h, apparently in high spirits. A few remained for the purpose of escorting the Chieftain, who walked by the side of Edward's litter, and attended him with the most affectionate a.s.siduity. About noon, after a journey which the nature of the conveyance, the pain of his bruises, and the roughness of the way rendered inexpressibly painful, Waverley was hospitably received into the house of a gentleman related to Fergus, who had prepared for him every accommodation which the simple habits of living then universal in the Highlands put in his power. In this person, an old man about seventy, Edward admired a relic of primitive simplicity. He wore no dress but what his estate afforded; the cloth was the fleece of his own sheep, woven by his own servants, and stained into tartan by the dyes produced from the herbs and lichens of the hills around him. His linen was spun by his daughters and maidservants, from his own flax; nor did his table, though plentiful, and varied with game and fish, offer an article but what was of native produce.

Claiming himself no rights of clans.h.i.+p or va.s.salage, he was fortunate in the alliance and protection of Vich Ian Vohr and other bold and enterprising Chieftains, who protected him in the quiet unambitious life he loved. It is true, the youth born on his grounds were often enticed to leave him for the service of his more active friends; but a few old servants and tenants used to shake their grey locks when they heard their master censured for want of spirit, and observed, 'When the wind is still, the shower falls soft.' This good old man, whose charity and hospitality were unbounded, would have received Waverley with kindness had he been the meanest Saxon peasant, since his situation required a.s.sistance. But his attention to a friend and guest of Vich Ian Vohr was anxious and unremitted. Other embrocations were applied to the injured limb, and new spells were put in practice. At length, after more solicitude than was perhaps for the advantage of his health, Fergus took farewell of Edward for a few days, when, he said, he would return to Tomanrait, and hoped by that time Waverley would be able to ride one of the Highland ponies of his landlord, and in that manner return to Glennaquoich.

The next day, when his good old host appeared, Edward learned that his friend had departed with the dawn, leaving none of his followers except Callum Beg, the sort of foot-page who used to attend his person, and who had now in charge to wait upon Waverley. On asking his host if he knew where the Chieftain was gone, the old man looked fixedly at him, with something mysterious and sad in the smile which was his only reply. Waverley repeated his question, to which his host answered in a proverb,-

What sent the messengers to h.e.l.l, Was asking what they knew full well.

[Footnote: Corresponding to the Lowland saying, 'Mony ane speirs the gate they ken fu' weel.']

He was about to proceed, but Callum Beg said, rather pertly, as Edward thought, that 'Ta Tighearnach (i.e. the Chief) did not like ta Sa.s.senagh duinhe-wa.s.sel to be pingled wi' mickle speaking, as she was na tat weel.' From this Waverley concluded he should disoblige his friend by inquiring of a stranger the object of a journey which he himself had not communicated.

It is unnecessary to trace the progress of our hero's recovery. The sixth morning had arrived, and he was able to walk about with a staff, when Fergus returned with about a score of his men. He seemed in the highest spirits, congratulated Waverley on his progress towards recovery, and finding he was able to sit on horseback, proposed their immediate return to Glennaquoich. Waverley joyfully acceded, for the form of its fair mistress had lived in his dreams during all the time of his confinement.

Now he has ridden o'er moor and moss, O'er hill and many a glen, Fergus, all the while, with his myrmidons, striding stoutly by his side, or diverging to get a shot at a roe or a heath-c.o.c.k. Waverley's bosom beat thick when they approached the old tower of Ian nan Chaistel, and could distinguish the fair form of its mistress advancing to meet them.

Fergus began immediately, with his usual high spirits, to exclaim, 'Open your gates, incomparable princess, to the wounded Moor Abindarez, whom Rodrigo de Narvez, constable of Antiquera, conveys to your castle; or open them, if you like it better, to the renowned Marquis of Mantua, the sad attendant of his half-slain friend Baldovinos of the Mountain. Ah, long rest to thy soul, Cervantes! without quoting thy remnants, how should I frame my language to befit romantic ears!'

Flora now advanced, and welcoming Waverley with much kindness, expressed her regret for his accident, of which she had already heard particulars, and her surprise that her brother should not have taken better care to put a stranger on his guard against the perils of the sport in which he engaged him. Edward easily exculpated the Chieftain, who, indeed, at his own personal risk, had probably saved his life.

This greeting over, Fergus said three or four words to his sister in Gaelic. The tears instantly sprung to her eyes, but they seemed to be tears of devotion and joy, for she looked up to heaven and folded her hands as in a solemn expression of prayer or grat.i.tude. After the pause of a minute, she presented to Edward some letters which had been forwarded from Tully-Veolan during his absence, and at the same time delivered some to her brother. To the latter she likewise gave three or four numbers of the Caledonian Mercury, the only newspaper which was then published to the north of the Tweed.

Both gentlemen retired to examine their despatches, and Edward speedily found that those which he had received contained matters of very deep interest.

CHAPTER XXV

NEWS FROM ENGLAND

The letters which Waverley had hitherto received from his relations in England were not such as required any particular notice in this narrative. His father usually wrote to him with the pompous affectation of one who was too much oppressed by public affairs to find leisure to attend to those of his own family. Now and then he mentioned persons of rank in Scotland to whom he wished his son should pay some attention; but Waverley, hitherto occupied by the amus.e.m.e.nts which he had found at Tully-Veolan and Glennaquoich, dispensed with paying any attention to hints so coldly thrown out, especially as distance, shortness of leave of absence, and so forth furnished a ready apology. But latterly the burden of Mr. Richard Waverley's paternal epistles consisted in certain mysterious hints of greatness and influence which he was speedily to attain, and which would ensure his son's obtaining the most rapid promotion, should he remain in the military service. Sir Everard's letters were of a different tenor. They were short; for the good Baronet was none of your illimitable correspondents, whose ma.n.u.script overflows the folds of their large post paper, and leaves no room for the seal; but they were kind and affectionate, and seldom concluded without some allusion to our hero's stud, some question about the state of his purse, and a special inquiry after such of his recruits as had preceded him from Waverley-Honour. Aunt Rachel charged him to remember his principles of religion, to take care of his health, to beware of Scotch mists, which, she had heard, would wet an Englishman through and through, never to go out at night without his great- coat, and, above all, to wear flannel next to his skin.

Mr. Pembroke only wrote to our hero one letter, but it was of the bulk of six epistles of these degenerate days, containing, in the moderate compa.s.s of ten folio pages, closely written, a precis of a supplementary quarto ma.n.u.script of addenda, delenda, et corrigenda in reference to the two tracts with which he had presented Waverley. This he considered as a mere sop in the pan to stay the appet.i.te of Edward's curiosity until he should find an opportunity of sending down the volume itself, which was much too heavy for the post, and which he proposed to accompany with certain interesting pamphlets, lately published by his friend in Little Britain, with whom he had kept up a sort of literary correspondence, in virtue of which the library shelves of Waverley-Honour were loaded with much trash, and a good round bill, seldom summed in fewer than three figures, was yearly transmitted, in which Sir Everard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, Bart., was marked Dr. to Jonathan Grubbet, bookseller and stationer, Little Britain. Such had hitherto been the style of the letters which Edward had received from England; but the packet delivered to him at Glennaquoich was of a different and more interesting complexion. It would be impossible for the reader, even were I to insert the letters at full length, to comprehend the real cause of their being written, without a glance into the interior of the British cabinet at the period in question.

The ministers of the day happened (no very singular event) to be divided into two parties; the weakest of which, making up by a.s.siduity of intrigue their inferiority in real consequence, had of late acquired some new proselytes, and with them the hope of superseding their rivals in the favour of their sovereign, and overpowering them in the House of Commons. Amongst others, they had thought it worth while to practise upon Richard Waverley. This honest gentleman, by a grave mysterious demeanour, an attention to the etiquette of business rather more than to its essence, a facility in making long dull speeches, consisting of truisms and commonplaces, hashed up with a technical jargon of office, which prevented the inanity of his orations from being discovered, had acquired a certain name and credit in public life, and even established, with many, the character of a profound politician; none of your s.h.i.+ning orators, indeed, whose talents evaporate in tropes of rhetoric and flashes of wit, but one possessed of steady parts for business, which would wear well, as the ladies say in choosing their silks, and ought in all reason to be good for common and every-day use, since they were confessedly formed of no holiday texture.

This faith had become so general that the insurgent party in the cabinet, of which we have made mention, after sounding Mr. Richard Waverley, were so satisfied with his sentiments and abilities as to propose that, in case of a certain revolution in the ministry, he should take an ostensible place in the new order of things, not indeed of the very first rank, but greatly higher, in point both of emolument and influence, than that which he now enjoyed. There was no resisting so tempting a proposal, notwithstanding that the Great Man under whose patronage he had enlisted, and by whose banner he had hitherto stood firm, was the princ.i.p.al object of the proposed attack by the new allies. Unfortunately this fair scheme of ambition was blighted in the very bud by a premature movement. All the official gentlemen concerned in it who hesitated to take the part of a voluntary resignation were informed that the king had no further occasion for their services; and in Richard Waverley's case, which the minister considered as aggravated by ingrat.i.tude, dismissal was accompanied by something like personal contempt and contumely. The public, and even the party of whom he shared the fall, sympathised little in the disappointment of this selfish and interested statesman; and he retired to the country under the comfortable reflection that he had lost, at the same time, character, credit, and,-what he at least equally deplored, -emolument.

Richard Waverley's letter to his son upon this occasion was a masterpiece of its kind. Aristides himself could not have made out a harder case. An unjust monarch and an ungrateful country were the burden of each rounded paragraph. He spoke of long services and unrequited sacrifices; though the former had been overpaid by his salary, and n.o.body could guess in what the latter consisted, unless it were in his deserting, not from conviction, but for the lucre of gain, the Tory principles of his family. In the conclusion, his resentment was wrought to such an excess by the force of his own oratory, that he could not repress some threats of vengeance, however vague and impotent, and finally acquainted his son with his pleasure that he should testify his sense of the ill-treatment he had sustained by throwing up his commission as soon as the letter reached him. This, he said, was also his uncle's desire, as he would himself intimate in due course.

Accordingly, the next letter which Edward opened was from Sir Everard. His brother's disgrace seemed to have removed from his well-natured bosom all recollection of their differences, and, remote as he was from every means of learning that Richard's disgrace was in reality only the just as well as natural consequence of his own unsuccessful intrigues, the good but credulous Baronet at once set it down as a new and enormous instance of the injustice of the existing government. It was true, he said, and he must not disguise it even from Edward, that his father could not have sustained such an insult as was now, for the first time, offered to one of his house, unless he had subjected himself to it by accepting of an employment under the present system. Sir Everard had no doubt that he now both saw and felt the magnitude of this error, and it should be his (Sir Everard's) business to take care that the cause of his regret should not extend itself to pecuniary consequences. It was enough for a Waverley to have sustained the public disgrace; the patrimonial injury could easily be obviated by the head of their family. But it was both the opinion of Mr. Richard Waverley and his own that Edward, the representative of the family of Waverley-Honour, should not remain in a situation which subjected him also to such treatment as that with which his father had been stigmatised. He requested his nephew therefore to take the fittest, and at the same time the most speedy, opportunity of transmitting his resignation to the War Office, and hinted, moreover, that little ceremony was necessary where so little had been used to his father. He sent mult.i.tudinous greetings to the Baron of Bradwardine.

A letter from Aunt Rachel spoke out even more plainly. She considered the disgrace of brother Richard as the just reward of his forfeiting his allegiance to a lawful though exiled sovereign, and taking the oaths to an alien; a concession which her grandfather, Sir Nigel Waverley, refused to make, either to the Roundhead Parliament or to Cromwell, when his life and fortune stood in the utmost extremity. She hoped her dear Edward would follow the footsteps of his ancestors, and as speedily as possible get rid of the badge of servitude to the usurping family, and regard the wrongs sustained by his father as an admonition from Heaven that every desertion of the line of loyalty becomes its own punishment. She also concluded with her respects to Mr. Bradwardine, and begged Waverley would inform her whether his daughter, Miss Rose, was old enough to wear a pair of very handsome ear-rings, which she proposed to send as a token of her affection. The good lady also desired to be informed whether Mr. Bradwardine took as much Scotch snuff and danced as unweariedly as he did when he was at Waverley-Honour about thirty years ago.

These letters, as might have been expected, highly excited Waverley's indignation. From the desultory style of his studies, he had not any fixed political opinion to place in opposition to the movements of indignation which he felt at his father's supposed wrongs. Of the real cause of his disgrace Edward was totally ignorant; nor had his habits at all led him to investigate the politics of the period in which he lived, or remark the intrigues in which his father had been so actively engaged. Indeed, any impressions which he had accidentally adopted concerning the parties of the times were (owing to the society in which he had lived at Waverley-Honour) of a nature rather unfavourable to the existing government and dynasty. He entered, therefore, without hesitation into the resentful feeling of the relations who had the best t.i.tle to dictate his conduct, and not perhaps the less willingly when he remembered the tedium of his quarters, and the inferior figure which he had made among the officers of his regiment. If he could have had any doubt upon the subject it would have been decided by the following letter from his commanding officer, which, as it is very short, shall be inserted verbatim:-

SIR,-

Having carried somewhat beyond the line of my duty an indulgence which even the lights of nature, and much more those of Christianity, direct towards errors which may arise from youth and inexperience, and that altogether without effect, I am reluctantly compelled, at the present crisis, to use the only remaining remedy which is in my power. You are, therefore, hereby commanded to repair to-, the headquarters of the regiment, within three days after the date of this letter. If you shall fail to do so, I must report you to the War Office as absent without leave, and also take other steps, which will be disagreeable to you as well as to,

Sir,

Your obedient Servant,