are, therefore, hereby commanded to repair to --, the headquarters
        of the regiment, within three days after the date of this letter. If you
        shall fail to do so, I must report you to the War-Office as absent
        without leave, and also take other steps, which will be disagreeable to
        you, as well as to, Sir,
                                                          Your obedient Servant,
                                                        J. GARDINER, Lieut.-Col.
                                              Commanding the -- Regt. Dragoons.«
 
Edward's blood boiled within him as he read this letter. He had been accustomed
from his very infancy to possess, in a great measure, the disposal of his own
time, and thus acquired habits which rendered the rules of military discipline
as unpleasing to him in this as they were in some other respects.
    An idea that in his own case they would not be enforced in a very rigid
manner had also obtained full possession of his mind, and had hitherto been
sanctioned by the indulgent conduct of his lieutenant-colonel. Neither had
anything occurred, to his knowledge, that should have induced his
commanding-officer, without any other warning than the hints we noticed at the
end of the fourteenth chapter, so suddenly to assume a harsh, and, as Edward
deemed it, so insolent a tone of dictatorial authority. Connecting it with the
letters he had just received from his family, he could not but suppose that it
was designed to make him feel, in his present situation, the same pressure of
authority which had been exercised in his father's case, and that the whole was
a concerted scheme to depress and degrade every member of the Waverley family.
    Without a pause, therefore, Edward wrote a few cold lines, thanking his
lieutenant-colonel for past civilities, and expressing regret that he should
have chosen to efface the remembrance of them, by assuming a different tone
towards him. The strain of his letter, as well as what he (Edward) conceived to
be his duty, in the present crisis, called upon him to lay down his commission;
and he therefore enclosed the formal resignation of a situation which subjected
him to so unpleasant a correspondence, and requested Colonel Gardiner would have
the goodness to forward it to the proper authorities.
    Having finished this magnanimous epistle, he felt somewhat uncertain
concerning the terms in which his resignation ought to be expressed, upon which
subject he resolved to consult Fergus Mac-Ivor. It may be observed in passing,
that the bold and prompt habits of thinking, acting, and speaking, which
distinguished this young Chieftain, had given him a considerable ascendency over