ng 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 liberali