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 assistance. 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 his 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 hell,

Was asking what they knew full well."1

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 Sassenagh Duinhé-wassel 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.

He

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. 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-cock. Waverley's bosom beat thick as 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

1 Corresponding to the Lowland saying, "Mony ane speirs the gate they ken fu' weel.'

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 Chieftair, 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 gratitude. 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 amusements 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 manuscript 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 Scottish mists, which, she had heard, would wet an Englishman through and through; never to go out at night without his greatcoat; 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 compass of ten folio pages, closely written, a precis of a supplementary quarto manuscript 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 appetite 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 WaverleyHonour, 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 assiduity 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 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 common-places, 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 shining 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 principal 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 farther occasion for their services; and, in Richard Waverley's case, which the minister considered as aggravated by ingratitude, dismissal was accompanied by something like personal contempt and contumely.

The public, and even the party of whom he shared the fall, sympathized 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 nobody 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 stigmatized. He requested his nephew therefore to take the fittest, and, at the same time, the most speedy opportunity, of transmitting his resignation to the WarOffice, and hinted, moreover, that little ceremony was necessary where so little had been used to his father. He sent multitudinous 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 Round-head 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 Scottish 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 title 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 indul gence 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 com