The lady starts up--a terrified menial
rushes in--but why pursue such a description?

As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our hero,
interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive domain that
surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, was
usually termed Waverley-Chase, had originally been forest ground, and
still, though broken by extensive glades, in which the young deer were
sporting, retained its pristine and savage character. It was traversed by
broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brush-wood, where the
beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag coursed
with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the crossbow. In one spot,
distinguished by a moss-grown Gothic monument, which retained the name of
Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said to have pierced seven bucks
with her own arrows. This was a very favourite haunt of Waverley. At
other times, with his gun and his spaniel, which served as an apology to
others, and with a book in his pocket, which perhaps served as an apology
to himself, he used to pursue one of these long avenues, which, after an
ascending sweep of four miles, gradually narrowed into a rude and
contracted path through the cliffy and woody pass called Mirkwood Dingle,
and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and small lake, named, from the
same cause, Mirkwood-Mere. There stood, in former times, a solitary tower
upon a rock almost surrounded by the water, which had acquired the name
of the Strength of Waverley, because in perilous times it had often been
the refuge of the family. There, in the wars of York and Lancaster, the
last adherents of the Red Rose who dared to maintain her cause carried on
a harassing and predatory warfare, till the stronghold was reduced by the
celebrated Richard of Gloucester. Here, too, a party of Cavaliers long
maintained themselves under Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William
whose fate Aunt Rachel commemorated. Through these scenes it was that
Edward loved to 'chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' and, like a
child among his toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless
imagery and emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as
brilliant and as fading as those of an evening sky. The effect of this
indulgence upon his temper and character will appear in the next chapter.

CHAPTER V

CHOICE OF A PROFESSION

From the minuteness wit