The impression of horror with which Waverley left Carlisle softened by degrees into melancholy, a gradation which was accelerated by the painful yet soothing task of writing to Rose; and, while he could not suppress his own feelings of the calamity, he endeavoured to place it in a light which might grieve her without shocking her imagination. The picture which he drew for her benefit he gradually familiarised to his own mind, and his next letters were more cheerful, and referred to the prospects of peace and happiness which lay before them. Yet, though his first horrible sensations had sunk into melancholy, Edward had reached his native country before he could, as usual on former occasions, look round for enjoyment upon the face of nature.

He then, for the first time since leaving Edinburgh, began to experience that pleasure which almost all feel who return to a verdant, populous, and highly cultivated country from scenes of waste desolation or of solitary and melancholy grandeur. But how were those feelings enhanced when he entered on the domain so long possessed by his forefathers; recognised the old oaks of Waverley- Chace; thought with what delight he should introduce Rose to all his favourite haunts; beheld at length the towers of the venerable hall arise above the woods which embowered it, and finally threw himself into the arms of the venerable relations to whom he owed so much duty and affection!

The happiness of their meeting was not tarnished by a single word of reproach. On the contrary, whatever pain Sir Everard and Mrs. Rachel had felt during Waverley’s perilous engagement with the young Chevalier, it assorted too well with the principles in which they had been brought up to incur reprobation, or even censure. Colonel Talbot also had smoothed the way with great address for Edward’s favourable reception by dwelling upon his gallant behaviour in the military character, particularly his bravery and generosity at Preston; until, warmed at the idea of their nephew’s engaging in single combat, making prisoner, and saving from slaughter so distinguished an officer as the Colonel himself, the imagination of the Baronet and his sister ranked the exploits of Edward with those of Wilibert, Hildebrand, and Nigel, the vaunted heroes of their line.

The appearance of Waverley, embrowned by exercise and dignified by the habits of military discipline, had acquired an athletic and hardy character, which not only verified the Colonel’s narration, but surprised and delighted all the inhabitants of Waverley-Honour. They crowded to see, to hear him, and to sing his praises. Mr. Pembroke, who secretly extolled his spirit and courage in embracing the genuine cause of the Church of England, censured his pupil gently, nevertheless, for being so careless of his manuscripts, which indeed, he said, had occasioned him some personal inconvenience, as, upon the Baronet’s being arrested by a king’s messenger, he had deemed it prudent to retire to a concealment called ‘The Priest’s Hole,’ from the use it had been put to in former days; where, he assured our hero, the butler had thought it safe to venture with food only once in the day, so that he had been repeatedly compelled to dine upon victuals either absolutely cold or, what was worse, only half warm, not to mention that sometimes his bed had not been arranged for two days together. Waverley’s mind involuntarily turned to the Patmos of the Baron of Bradwardine, who was well pleased with Janet’s fare and a few bunches of straw stowed in a cleft in the front of a sand-cliff; but he made no remarks upon a contrast which could only mortify his worthy tutor.

All was now in a bustle to prepare for the nuptials of Edward, an event to which the good old Baronet and Mrs. Rachel looked forward as if to the renewal of their own youth. The match, as Colonel Talbot had intimated, had seemed to them in the highest degree eligible, having every recommendation but wealth, of which they themselves had more than enough. Mr. Clippurse was therefore summoned to Waverley-Honour, under better auspices than at the commencement of our story. But Mr. Clippurse came not alone; for, being now stricken in years, he had associated with him a nephew, a younger vulture (as our English Juvenal, who tells the tale of Swallow the attorney, might have called him), and they now carried on business as Messrs. Clippurse and Hookem. These worthy gentlemen had directions to make the necessary settlements on the most splendid scale of liberality, as if Edward were to wed a peeress in her own right, with her paternal estate tacked to the fringe of her ermine.

But before entering upon a subject of proverbial delay, I must remind my reader of the progress of a stone rolled downhil............