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nuendo 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 yesterday morning “wi' his boots fu' 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 & 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 his guest had quitted his pillow, in which the younger combatant had been disarmed and wounded in the sword

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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 choose to repeat. 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 by 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 intrusted 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 upon 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 jest-books. " 1 Of his quarrel with Sir Hew he said nothing more, than that it was settled in a fitting manner.

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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 is probable that a young man, accustomed to more cheerful society, would have tired of the conversation of so violent an assertor of the " boast of heraldry the Baron; but Edward found an agreeable variety in that of Miss Bradwardine, who listened with eagerness to his remarks upon literature, and showed great justness of taste in her answers. The sweetness of her disposition had made her submit with complacency, and even pleasure, to the course of reading prescribed by her father, although it not only comprehended several heavy folios of history, but certain gigantic tomes in High-Church polemics. In heraldry he was fortunately contented to give her only such a slight tincture as might be acquired by perusal of the

1 Although "canting heraldry" is generally reprobated, it seems nevertheless to have been adopted in the arms and mottoes of many honourable families. Thus the motto of the Vernons, "Ver non semper viret," is a perfect pun, and so is that of the Onslows, "Festina lente." The "Periissem ni per-iissem" of the Anstruthers is liable to a similar objection. One of that ancient race, finding that an antagonist, with whom he had fixed a friendly meeting, was determined to take the opportunity of assassinating him, prevented the hazard by dashing out his brains with a battleaxe. Two sturdy arms, brandishing such a weapon, form the usual crest of the family, with the above motto, "Periissem ni per-iissem" (I had died, unless I had gone through with it).