et, Colonel
Talbot, which is doubtless your humour, as I have seen in other
gentlemen of birth and honour in your country, I must again repeat it
as a most ancient and distinguished bearing, as well as that of my young
friend Francis Stanley, which is the eagle and child.'

'The bird and bantling they call it in Derbyshire, sir,' said Stanley.

'Ye're a daft callant, sir,' said the Baron, who had a great liking to
this young man, perhaps because he sometimes teased him--'Ye're a daft
callant, and I must correct you some of these days,' shaking his great
brown fist at him. 'But what I meant to say, Colonel Talbot, is, that
yours is an ancient PROSAPIA, or descent, and since you have lawfully
and justly acquired the estate for you and yours, which I have lost for
me and mine, I wish it may remain in your name as many centuries as it
has done in that of the late proprietor's.'

'That,' answered the Colonel, 'is very handsome, Mr. Bradwardine,
indeed.'

'And yet, sir, I cannot but marvel that you, Colonel, whom I noted to
have so much of the AMOR PATRIAE, when we met in Edinburgh, as even to
vilipend other countries, should have chosen to establish your Lares, or
household gods, PROCUL A PATRIEA FINIBUS, and in a manner to expatriate
yourself.'

'Why really, Baron, I do not see why, to keep the secret of these
foolish boys, Waverley and Stanley, and of my wife, who is no wiser, one
old soldier should continue to impose upon another. You must know,
then, that I have so much of that same prejudice in favour of my native
country, that the sum of money which I advanced to the seller of this
extensive barony has only purchased for me a box in --shire, called
Brerewood Lodge, with about two hundred and fifty acres of land,
the chief merit of which is, that it is within a very few miles of
Waverley-Honour.'

'And who, then, in the name of Haven, has bought this property?'

'That,' said the Colonel,' it is this gentleman's profession to
explain.'

The Bailie, whom this reference regarded, and who had all this while
shifted from one foot to another with great impatience, 'like a hen,'
as he afterwards said, 'upon a het girdle'; and chuckling, he might have
added, like the said hen in all the glory of laying an egg--now pushed
forward: 'That I can, that I can, your Honour,' drawing from his pocket
a budget of papers, and untying the red tape with a hand trembling
with eagerness. 'Here is the disposition and assignation, by