is degenerate scion had committed a farther offence against the head
and source of their gentility, by the intermarriage of their
representative with Judith, heiress of Oliver Bradshawe, of Highley Park,
whose arms, the same with those of Bradshawe the regicide, they had
quartered with the ancient coat of Waverley. These offences, however, had
vanished from Sir Everard's recollection in the heat of his resentment;
and had Lawyer Clippurse, for whom his groom was despatched express,
arrived but an hour earlier, he might have had the benefit of drawing a
new settlement of the lordship and manor of Waverley-Honour, with all its
dependencies. But an hour of cool reflection is a great matter when
employed in weighing the comparative evil of two measures to neither of
which we are internally partial. Lawyer Clippurse found his patron
involved in a deep study, which he was too respectful to disturb,
otherwise than by producing his paper and leathern ink-case, as prepared
to minute his honour's commands. Even this slight manoeuvre was
embarrassing to Sir Everard, who felt it as a reproach to his indecision.
He looked at the attorney with some desire to issue his fiat, when the
sun, emerging from behind a cloud, poured at once its chequered light
through the stained window of the gloomy cabinet in which they were
seated. The Baronet's eye, as he raised it to the splendour, fell right
upon the central scutcheon, inpressed with the same device which his
ancestor was said to have borne in the field of Hastings,--three ermines
passant, argent, in a field azure, with its appropriate motto, Sans
tache. 'May our name rather perish,' exclaimed Sir Everard, 'than that
ancient and loyal symbol should be blended with the dishonoured insignia
of a traitorous Roundhead!'

All this was the effect of the glimpse of a sunbeam, just sufficient to
light Lawyer Clippurse to mend his pen. The pen was mended in vain. The
attorney was dismissed, with directions to hold himself in readiness on
the first summons.

The apparition of Lawyer Clippurse at the Hall occasioned much
speculation in that portion of the world to which Waverley-Honour formed
the centre. But the more judicious politicians of this microcosm augured
yet worse consequences to Richard Waverley from a movement which shortly
followed his apostasy. This was no less than an excursion of the Baronet
in his coach-and-six, with four attendants in rich liveries, to make a
visit of some dura