Shows, visions, soothsays, and prophecies, And all that feigned is, as leasings, tales, and lies. With such conversation, and the romantic legends which it introduced, closed our hero's second evening in the house of Tully-Veolan. CHAPTER XIV. A Discovery-Waverley becomes domesticated at Tully-Veolan. THE next morning Edward arose betimes, and in a morning walk around the house and its vicinity, came suddenly upon a small court in front of the dog-kennel, where his friend Davie was employed about his four-footed charge. One quick glance of his eye recognised Waverley, when, instantly turning his back, as if he had not observed him, he began to sing part of an old ballad: Young men will love thee more fair and more fast; Old men's love the longest will last, And the throstle-cock's head is under his wing. The young man's wrath is like light straw on fire; But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire, And the throstle-cock's head is under his wing. The young man will brawl at the evening board; Heard ye so merry the little bird sing? But the old man will draw at the dawning the sword, Waverley could not avoid observing that Davie laid something like a satirical emphasis on these lines. He therefore approached, and endeavoured, by sundry queries, to elicit from him what the inuendo might mean; but Davie had no mind to explain, and had wit enough to make his folly cloak his knavery. Edward could collect nothing from him excepting that the Laird of Balmawhapple had gone home « wi' his boots full o' bluid.» In the garden, however, he met the old butler, who no longer attempted to conceal, that, having been bred in the nursery line with Sumack and Co. of Newcastle, he sometimes wrought a turn in the flower-borders to oblige the laird and Miss Rose. By a series of queries, Edward at length discovered, with a painful feeling of surprise and shame, that Balmawhapple's submission and apology had been the consequence of a rencontre with the Baron before he had quitted his pillow, in which the younger combatant had been disarmed and wounded in the sword arm. Greatly mortified at this information, Edward sought out his friendly host, and anxiously expostulated with him upon the injustice he had done him in anticipating his meeting with Mr Falconer, a circumstance which, considering his youth and the profession of arms which he had just adopted, was capable of being represented much to his prejudice. The Baron justified himself at greater length than I chuse to report. He urged, that the quarrel was common to them, and that Balmawhapple could not, by the code of honour, evite giving satisfaction to both, which he had done in his case an honourable meeting, and in that of Edward by such a palinode as rendered the use of the sword unnecessary, and which, being made and accepted, must necessarily sopite the whole affair. With this excuse or explanation Waverley was silenced, if not satisfied, but he could not help testifying some displeasure against the blessed Bear which had given rise to the quarrel, nor refrain from hinting, that the sanctified epithet was hardly appropriate. The Baron observed, « he could not deny that the Bear, though allowed by heralds as a most honourable ordinary, had, nevertheless, somewhat fierce, churlish, and morose in his disposition (as might be read in Archibald Simson, pastor of Dalkeith's Hieroglyphica Animalium), and had thus been the type of many quarrels and dissensions which had occurred in the house of Bradwardine; of which,» he continued, « I might commemorate mine own unfortunate dissension with my third cousin by the mother's side, Sir Hew Halbert, who was so unthinking as to deride my family name, as if it had been quasi Bear-warden: a most uncivil jest, since it not only insinuated that the founder of our house occupied such a mean situation as to be a custodier of wild beasts, a charge which, ye must have observed, is only entrusted to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war, but bestowed by way of paranomasia, or pun, upon our family appellation,—a sort of bearing which the French call armoires parlantes, the Latins arma cantantia, and your English authorities, canting heraldry; being indeed a species of emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such like mendicants, whose gibberish is formed upon playing on the word, than the noble, honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which assigns armorial bearings as the reward of noble and generous actions, and not to tickle the ear with vain quodlibets, such as are found in jestbooks. Of his quarrel with Sir Hew, he said nothing more than that it was settled in a fitting manner. Having been so minute with respect to the diversions of Tully-Veolan, on the first days of Edward's arrival, for the purpose of introducing its inmates to the reader's acquaintance, it becomes less necessary to trace the progress of his intercourse with the same accuracy. It |