‘Because your good nature blinds your good sense,’ replied Major Melville.  ’Observe now:  this young man, descended of a family of hereditary Jacobites, his uncle the leader of the Tory interest in the county of—­, his father a disobliged and discontented courtier, his tutor a nonjuror, and the author of two treasonable volumes—­this youth, I say, enters into Gardiner’s dragoons, bringing with him a body-of young fellows from his uncle’s estate, who have not stickled at avowing, in their way, the High Church principles they learned at Waverley-Honour, in their disputes with their comrades.  To these young men Waverley is unusually attentive; they are supplied with money beyond a soldier’s wants, and inconsistent with his discipline; and are under the management of a favourite sergeant, through whom they hold an unusually close communication with their captain, and affect to consider themselves as independent of the other officers, and superior to their comrades.’

’All this, my dear Major, is the natural consequence of their attachment to their young landlord, and of their finding themselves in a regiment levied chiefly in the north of Ireland and the west of Scotland, and of course among comrades disposed to quarrel with them, both as Englishmen, and as members of the Church of England.’

‘Well said, parson!’ replied the magistrate.—­’I would some of your synod heard you.—­But let me go on.  This young man obtains leave of absence, goes to Tully-Veolan—­the principles of the Baron of Bradwardine are pretty well known, not to mention that this lad’s uncle brought him off in the year fifteen; he engages there in a brawl, in which he is said to have disgraced the commission he bore; Colonel Gardiner writes to him, first mildly, then more sharply—­I think you will not doubt his having done so, since he says so; the mess invite him to explain the quarrel in which he is said to have been involved; he neither replies to his commander nor his comrades.  In the meanwhile, his soldiers become mutinous and disorderly, and at length, when the rumour of this unhappy rebellion becomes general, his favourite Sergeant Houghton, and another fellow, are detected in correspondence with a French emissary, accredited, as he says, by Captain Waverley, who urges him, according to the men’s confession, to desert with the troop and join their captain, who was with Prince Charles.  In the meanwhile this trusty captain is, by his own admission, residing at Glennaquoich with the most active, subtle, and desperate Jacobite in Scotland; he goes with him at least as far as their famous hunting rendezvous, and I fear a little farther.  Meanwhile two other summonses are sent him; one warning him of the disturbances in his troop, another peremptorily ordering him to repair to the regiment, which, indeed, common sense might have dictated, when he observed rebellion thickening all round him.  He returns an absolute refusal, and throws up his commission.’