t is at all established to my
satisfaction,' said the clergyman.

'Because your good nature blinds your good sense,' replied Major
Melville. 'Observe now: this young man, descended of a family of
hereditary Jacobites, his uncle the leader of the Tory interest in the
county of--, his father a disobliged and discontented courtier, his
tutor a nonjuror, and the author of two treasonable volumes--this youth,
I say, enters into Gardiner's dragoons, bringing with him a body-of
young fellows from his uncle's estate, who have not stickled at
avowing, in their way, the High Church principles they learned at
Waverley-Honour, in their disputes with their comrades. To these young
men Waverley is unusually attentive; they are supplied with money beyond
a soldier's wants, and inconsistent with his discipline; and are under
the management of a favourite sergeant, through whom they hold an
unusually close communication with their captain, and affect to consider
themselves as independent of the other officers, and superior to their
comrades.'

'All this, my dear Major, is the natural consequence of their attachment
to their young landlord, and of their finding themselves in a regiment
levied chiefly in the north of Ireland and the west of Scotland, and of
course among comrades disposed to quarrel with them, both as Englishmen,
and as members of the Church of England.'

'Well said, parson!' replied the magistrate.--'I would some of your
synod heard you.--But let me go on. This young man obtains leave
of absence, goes to Tully-Veolan--the principles of the Baron of
Bradwardine are pretty well known, not to mention that this lad's uncle
brought him off in the year fifteen; he engages there in a brawl, in
which he is said to have disgraced the commission he bore; Colonel
Gardiner writes to him, first mildly, then more sharply--I think you
will not doubt his having done so, since he says so; the mess invite
him to explain the quarrel in which he is said to have been involved; he
neither replies to his commander nor his comrades. In the meanwhile, his
soldiers become mutinous and disorderly, and at length, when the rumour
of this unhappy rebellion becomes general, his favourite Sergeant
Houghton, and another fellow, are detected in correspondence with a
French emissary, accredited, as he says, by Captain Waverley, who urges
him, according to the men's confession, to desert with the troop and
join their captain, who was with Prince Charles.