 which you are perusing. The earlier events
are studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the
character rather by narrative, than by the duller medium of direct description;
but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances,
however important, which your imagination must have forestalled, and leave you
to suppose those things which it would be abusing your patience to relate at
length.
    We are, therefore, so far from attempting to trace the dull progress of
Messrs. Clippurse and Hookem, or that of their worthy official brethren, who had
the charge of suing out the pardons of Edward Waverley and his intended
father-in-law, that we can but touch upon matters more attractive. The mutual
epistles, for example, which were exchanged between Sir Everard and the Baron
upon this occasion, though matchless specimens of eloquence in their way, must
be consigned to merciless oblivion. Nor can I tell you at length, how worthy
Aunt Rachel, not without a delicate and affectionate allusion to the
circumstances which had transferred Rose's maternal diamonds to the hands of
Donald Bean Lean, stocked her casket with a set of jewels that a duchess might
have envied. Moreover, the reader will have the goodness to imagine that Job
Houghton and his dame were suitably provided for, although they could never be
persuaded that their son fell otherwise than fighting by the young squire's
side; so that Alick, who, as a lover of truth, had made many needless attempts
to expound the real circumstances to them, was finally ordered to say not a word
more upon the subject. He indemnified himself, however, by the liberal allowance
of desperate battles, grisly executions, and raw-head and bloody-bone stories,
with which he astonished the servants' hall.
    But although these important matters may be briefly told in narrative, like
a newspaper report of a Chancery suit, yet, with all the urgency which Waverley
could use, the real time which the law proceedings occupied, joined to the delay
occasioned by the mode of travelling at that period, rendered it considerably
more than two months ere Waverley, having left England, alighted once more at
the mansion of the Laird of Duchran to claim the hand of his plighted bride.
    The day of his marriage was fixed for the sixth after his arrival. The Baron
of Bradwardine, with whom bridals, christenings, and funerals, were festivals of
high and solemn import, felt a little hurt, that, including the family of the
Duchran, and all the immediate vicinity who had title to be present on such
