having introduced a stranger while he was engaged in this laborious, and, as he might suppose it, degrading office, requested to know the gentleman's commands. Being informed that he wished to pay his respects to his master, that his name was Waverley, and so forth, the old man's countenance assumed a great deal of respectful importance. "He could take it upon his conscience to say, his honour would have exceeding pleasure in seeing him. Would not Mr. Waverley choose some refreshment after his journey? His honour was with the folk who were getting doon the dark hag; the twa gardener lads (an emphasis on the word twa) had been ordered to attend him; and he had been just amusing himself in the mean time with dressing Miss Rose's flower-bed, that he might be near to receive his honour's orders, if need were: he was very fond of a garden, but had little time for such divertisements."

"He canna get it wrought in abune twa days in the week at no rate whatever," said Edward's fantastic conductor.

A grim look from the butler chastised his interference, and he commanded him, by the name of Davie Gellatley, in a tone which admitted no discussion, to look for his honour at the dark hag, and tell him there was a gentleman from the south had arrived at the Ha'.

"Can this poor fellow deliver a letter?" asked Edward.

"With all fidelity, sir, to any one whom he respects. I would hardly trust him with a long message by word of mouththough he is more knave than fool."

Waverley delivered his credentials to Mr. Gellatley, who seemed to confirm the butler's last observation, by twisting his features at him, when he was looking another way, into the resemblance of the grotesque face on the bole of a German tobacco-pipe; after which, with an odd congé to Waverley, he danced off to discharge his errand.

"He is an innocent, sir," said the butler; "there is one such in almost every town in the country, but ours is brought far ben. He used to work a day's turn weel eneugh; but he help'd Miss Rose when she was flemit with the Laird of Killancureit's new English bull, and since that time we ca' him Davie Do-little; indeed we might ca' him Davie Donaething, for since he got that gay clothing, to please his honour and my young mistress, (great folks will have their fancies,) he has done naething but dance up and down about the toun, without doing a single turn, unless trimming the

laird's fishing wand or busking his flies, or may be catching a dish of trouts at an orra-time. But here comes Miss Rose, who, I take burden upon me for her, will be especial glad to see one of the house of Waverley at her father's mansion of Tully-Veolan."

But Rose Bradwardine deserves better of her unworthy historian, than to be introduced at the end of a chapter.

In the meanwhile it may be noticed, that Waverley learned two things from this colloquy; that in Scotland a single house was called a town, and a natural fool an innocent.1

CHAPTER X

ROSE BRADWARDINE AND HER FATHER

MISS BRADWARDINE was but seventeen; yet, at the last races of the county town of —, upon her health being proposed among a round of beauties, the Laird of Bumperquaigh, permanent toast-master and croupier of the Bautherwhillery Club, not only said More to the pledge in a pint bumper of Bourdeaux, but ere pouring forth the libation, denominated the divinity to whom it was dedicated, "the Rose of TullyVeolan ;" upon which festive occasion, three cheers were given by all the sitting members of that respectable society, whose throats the wine had left capable of such exertion. Nay, I am well assured, that the sleeping partners of the company snorted applause, and that although strong bumpers and weak brains had consigned two or three to the floor, yet even these, fallen as they were from their high estate, and weltering-I will carry the parody no farther-uttered divers inarticulate sounds, intimating their assent to the motion.

Such unanimous applause could not be extorted but by acknowledged merit; and Rose Bradwardine not only deserved it, but also the approbation of much more rational persons than the Bautherwhillery Club could have mustered, even before discussion of the first magnum. She was indeed a very ·

1 I am ignorant how long the ancient and established custom of keeping fools has been disused in England. Swift writes an epitaph on the Earl of Suffolk's fool,

"Whose name was Dickie Pearce."

In Scotland the custom subsisted till late in the last century; at Glammis Castle is preserved the dress of one of the jesters, very handsome, and ornamented with many bells It is not above thirty years since such a character stood by the sideboard of a nobleman of the first rank in Scotland, and occasionally mixed in the conversation, till he carried the joke rather too far, in making proposals to one of the young ladies of the family, and publishing the bans betwixt her and himself in the public church.

pretty girl of the Scotch cast of beauty, that is, with a profusion of hair of paley gold, and a skin like the snow of her own mountains in whiteness. Yet she had not a pallid or pensive cast of countenance; her features, as well as her temper, had a lively expression; her complexion, though not florid, was so pure as to seem transparent, and the slightest emotion sent her whole blood at once to her face and neck. Her form, though under the common size, was remarkably elegant, and her motions light, easy, and unembarrassed. She came from another part of the garden to receive Captain Waverley, with a manner that hovered between bashfulness and courtesy.

The first greetings past, Edward learned from her that the dark hag, which had somewhat puzzled him in the butler's account of his master's avocations, had nothing to do either with a black cat or a broomstick, but was simply a portion of oak copse which was to be felled that day. She offered, with diffident civility, to show the stranger the way to the spot, which, it seems, was not far distant; but they were prevented by the appearance of the Baron of Bradwardine in person, who, summoned by David Gellatley, now appeared, "on hospitable thoughts intent," clearing the ground at a prodigious rate with swift and long strides, which reminded Waverley of the seven-league boots of the nursery fable. He was a tall, thin, athletic figure, old indeed and grey-haired, but with every muscle rendered as tough as whip-cord by constant exercise. He was dressed carelessly, and more like a Frenchman than an Englishman of the period, while, from his hard features and perpendicular rigidity of stature, he bore some resemblance to a Swiss officer of the guards, who had resided some time at Paris, and caught the costume, but not the ease or manner, of its inhabitants. The truth was, that his language and habits were as heterogeneous as his external appearance.

Owing to his natural disposition to study, or perhaps to a very general Scottish fashion of giving young men of rank a legal education, he had been bred with a view to the bar. But the politics of his family precluding the hope of his rising in that profession, Mr. Bradwardine travelled with high reputation for several years, and made some campaigns in foreign service. After his démêlée with the law of high treason in 1715, he had lived in retirement, conversing almost entirely with those of his own principles in the vicinage. The pedantry of the lawyer, superinduced upon the military

! pride of the soldier, might remind a modern of the days of the zealous volunteer service, when the bar-gown of our pleaders was often flung over a blazing uniform. To this must be added the prejudices of ancient birth and Jacobite politics, greatly strengthened by habits of solitary and secluded authority, which, though exercised only within the bounds of his half-cultivated estate, was there indisputable and undisputed. For, as he used to observe, "the lands of Bradwardine, Tully-Veolan, and others, had been erected into a fee barony by a charter from David the First, cum liberali potest. habendi curias et justicias, cum fossa et furca (LIE pit and gallows) et saka et soka, et thol et theam, et infang-thief et outfang-thief, sive hand-habend. sive bak-barand." The peculiar meaning of all these cabalistical words few or none could explain; but they implied, upon the whole, that the Baron of Bradwardine might, in case of delinquency, imprison, try, and execute his vassals at his pleasure. Like James the First, however, the present possessor of this authority was more pleased in talking about prerogative than in exercising it; and excepting that he imprisoned two poachers in the dungeon of the old tower of Tully-Veolan, where they were sorely frightened by ghosts, and almost eaten by rats, and that he set an old woman in the jougs (or Scottish pillory) for saying "there were mair fules in the laird's ha' house than Davie Gellatley," I do not learn that he was accused of abusing his high powers. Still, however, the conscious pride of possessing them gave additional importance to his language and deport

ment.

At his first address to Waverley, it would seem that the hearty pleasure he felt to behold the nephew of his friend had somewhat discomposed the stiff and upright dignity of the Baron of Bradwardine's demeanour, for the tears stood in the old gentleman's eyes, when, having first shaken Edward heartily by the hand in the English fashion, he embraced him à-la-mode François, and kissed him on both sides of his face; while the hardness of his gripe, and the quantity of Scotch snuff which his accolade communicated, called corresponding drops of moisture to the eyes of his guest.

"but it makes

"Upon the honour of a gentleman,” he said, me young again to see you here, Mr. Waverley! A worthy scion of the old stock of Waverley-Honour-spes altera, as Maro hath it-and you have the look of the old line, Captain Waverley; not so portly yet as my old friend Sir

Everard-mais cela viendra avec le tems, as my Dutch acquaint ance, Baron Kikkitbroeck, said of the sagesse of Madame son epouse. And so ye have mounted the cockade? Right, right; though I could have wished the colour different, and so I would ha' deemed might Sir Everard. But no more of that;

I am old, and times are changed.—And how does the worthy knight baronet, and the fair Mrs. Rachel ?-Ah, ye laugh, young man! In troth she was the fair Mrs. Rachel in the year of grace seventeen hundred and sixteen; but time passes -et singula prædantur anni—that is most certain. But once again ye are most heartily welcome to my poor house of TullyVeolan!-Hie to the house, Rose, and see that Alexander Saunderson looks out the old Chateau Margoux, which I sent from Bourdeaux to Dundee in the year 1713.'

Rose tripped off demurely enough till she turned the first corner, and then ran with the speed of a fairy, that she might gain leisure, after discharging her father's commission, to put her own dress in order, and produce all her little finery, an occupation for which the approaching dinner-hour left but limited time.

"We cannot rival the luxuries of your English table, Captain Waverley, or give you the epula lautiores of WaverleyHonour-I say epula rather than prandium, because the latter phrase is popular; Epulæ ad senatum, prandium vero ad populum attinet, says Suetonius Tranquillus. But I trust ye will applaud my Bourdeaux; c'est des deux oreilles, as Captain Vinsauf used to say-Vinum primæ notæ, the Principal of St. Andrews denominated it. And, once more, Captain Waverley, right glad am I that ye are here to drink the best my cellar can make forthcoming."

This speech, with the necessary interjectional answers, continued from the lower alley where they met, up to the door of the house, where four or five servants in old-fashioned liveries, headed by Alexander Saunderson, the butler, who now bore no token of the sable stains of the garden, received them in grand costume,

In an old hall hung round with pikes and with bows,

With old bucklers and corslets that had borne many shrewd blows.

With much ceremony, and still more real kindness, the Baron, without stopping in any intermediate apartment, conducted his guest through several into the great dining parlour, wainscotted with black oak, and hung round with the pictures of his