Red Cap Tales | Page 5

other hand, his Aunt Rachel warned him with many
head-shakings against the forwardness of the ladies whom he would
meet with in Scotland (where she had never been). Then, more
practically, she put into his hand a purse of broad gold pieces, and set
on his finger a noble diamond ring.
As for Miss Celie Stubbs, she came to the Waverley church on the last
day before his departure, arrayed in all her best and newest clothes,
mighty fine with hoops, patches, and silks everywhere. But Master
Edward, who had his uniform on for the first time, his gold-laced hat
beside him on the cushion, his broadsword by his side, and his spurs on
his heels, hardly once looked at the Squire's pew. At which neglect
little Celie pouted somewhat at the time, but since within six months
she was married to Jones, the steward's son at Waverley-Honour, with
whom she lived happy ever after, we may take it that her heart could
not have been very deeply touched by Edward's inconstancy.
* * * * *
[As a suitable first taste of the original I now read to my audience from
a pocket Waverley, Chapter the Sixth, "The Adieus of Waverley." It
was listened to on the whole with more interest than I had hoped for. It
was an encouraging beginning. But Sir Toady, always irrepressible,
called out a little impatiently: "That's enough about him. Now tell us
what he did!" And this is how I endeavoured to obey.]

II. THE ENCHANTED CASTLE

Edward Waverley found his regiment quartered at Dundee in Scotland,
but, the time being winter and the people of the neighbourhood not
very fond of the "red soldiers," he did not enjoy the soldiering life so
much as he had expected. So, as soon as the summer was fairly come,
he asked permission to visit the Castle of Bradwardine, in order to pay
his respects to his uncle's friend.
It was noon of the second day after setting out when Edward Waverley
arrived at the village of Tully-Veolan to which he was bound. Never
before had he seen such a place. For, at his uncle's house of
Waverley-Honour, the houses of villagers, all white and neat, stood
about a village green, or lurked ancient and ivy-grown under the shade
of great old park trees. But the turf-roofed hovels of Tully-Veolan, with
their low doors supported on either side by all too intimate piles of peat
and rubbish, appeared to the young Englishman hardly fit for human
beings to live in. Indeed, from the hordes of wretched curs which
barked after the heels of his horse, Edward might have supposed them
meant to serve as kennels--save, that is, for the ragged urchins who
sprawled in the mud of the road and the old women who, distaff in
hand, dashed out to rescue them from being trampled upon by Edward's
charger.
Passing gardens as full of nettles as of pot-herbs, and entering between
a couple of gate-posts, each crowned by the image of a rampant bear,
the young soldier at last saw before him, at the end of an avenue, the
steep roofs and crow-stepped gable ends of Bradwardine, half
dwelling-house, half castle. Here Waverley dismounted, and, giving his
horse to the soldier-servant who had accompanied him, he entered a
court in which no sound was to be heard save the plashing of a fountain.
He saw the door of a tall old mansion before him. Going up he raised
the knocker, and instantly the echoes resounded through the empty
house. But no one came to answer. The castle appeared uninhabited,
the court a desert. Edward glanced about him, half expecting to be
hailed by some ogre or giant, as adventurers used to be in the fairy tales
he had read in childhood. But instead he only saw all sorts of bears, big
and little, climbing (as it seemed) on the roof, over the windows, and
out upon the ends of the gables--while over the door at which he had

been vainly knocking he read in antique lettering the motto, "BEWAR
THE BAR." But all these bruins were of stone, and each one of them
kept as still and silent as did everything else about this strange
mansion--except, that is, the fountain, which, behind him in the court,
kept up its noisy splashing.
Feeling, somehow, vaguely uncomfortable, Edward Waverley crossed
the court into a garden, green and pleasant, but to the full as solitary as
the castle court. Here again he found more bears, all sitting up in rows
on their haunches, on parapets and along terraces, as if engaged in
looking at the view. He wandered up and down, searching for some one
to whom to speak, and had almost made up his mind that he had found