The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

36 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
him. I would rather Albert's dead body were laid between Charles and
Cromwell, than hear he fled as early as young Abney."
" My dearest father," said the young lady, weeping as she spoke, "what
can I say to comfort you?"
"Comfort me, say'st thou, girl? I am sick of comfort —an honourable
death, with the ruins of Woodstock for my monument, were the only
comfort to old Henry Lee. Yes, by the memory of my fathers! I will
make good the Lodge against these rebellious robbers."
"Yet be ruled, dearest father," said the maiden, "and submit to that
which we cannot gainsay. My uncle Everard"Here the old man caught at her unfinished words. "Thy uncle Everard,
wench!-Well, get on.-What of thy precious and loving uncle Everard?"
"Nothing, sir," she said, "if the subject displeases you."
"Displeases me?" he replied, " why should it displease me? or if it did,
why shouldst thou, or any one, affect to care about it? What is it that
hath happened of late years -what is it can be thought to happen that
astrologer can guess at, which can give pleasure to us "
"Fate," she replied, "may have in store the joyful restoration of our
banished Prince."
"Too late for my time, Aliee," said the knight; "if there be such a
white page in the heavenly book, it will not be turned until long after my
day. -But I see thou wouldst escape me. -In a word, what of thy uncle
Everard?"
"Nay, sir," said Alice, "God knows I would rather be silent for ever,
than speak what might, as you would take it, add to your present distemperature."
" Distemperature " said her father; "Oh, thou art a sweet lipped
physician, and wouldst, I warrant me, drop nought but sweet balm, and
honey, and oil, on my distemperature- if that is the phrase for an old
man's ailment, when he is wellnigh heart-broken.-Once mdre, what of thy
uncle Everard?"
His last words were uttered in a high and peevish tone of voice; and
Alice Lee answered her father in a trembling and submissive tone.
" I only meant to say, sir, that I am well assured that my uncle Everard,
when we quit this place""That is to say, when we are kicked out of it by crop-eared canting
villains like himself. —But on with thy bountiful uncle-what will he do?
-will he give us the remains of his worshipful and economical housekeeping, the fragments of a thrice-sacked capon twice a-week, and a
plentiful fast on the other five days?-Will he give us beds beside his halfstarved nags, and put them under a short allowance of straw, that his
sister's husband -that I should have called my deceased angel by such a
name - and his sister's daughter, may not sleep on the stones? Or will
he send us a noble each, with a warning to make it last, for he had never
known the ready-penny so hard to come by? Or what else will your uncle
Everard do for us? Get us a furlough to beg? Why, I can do that without
him."
"You misconstrue him much," answered Alice, with more spirit than
she had hitherto displayed; "and would you but question your own heart,
you would acknowledge-I speak with reverence-that your tongue utters
what your better judgment would disown. My uncle Everard is neither a
miser nor a hypocrite- neither so fond of the goods of this world that he
would not supply our distresses amply, nor so wedded to fanatical opinions
as to exclude charity for other sects beside his own."
"Ay, ay, the Church of England is a sect with him, I doubt not, and
perhaps with thee too, Alice," said the knight. " What is a Muggletonian,
or a Ranter, or a Brownist, but a sectary? and thy phrase places them all,
with Jack Presbyter himself, on the same footing with our learned prelates