These letters, as might have been expected, highly excited Waverley’s indignation.  From the desultory style of his studies, he had not any fixed political opinion to place in opposition to the movements of indignation which he felt at his father’s supposed wrongs.  Of the real cause of his disgrace Edward was totally ignorant; nor had his habits at all led him to investigate the politics of the period in which he lived, or remark the intrigues in which his father had been so actively engaged.  Indeed, any impressions which he had accidentally adopted concerning the parties of the times were (owing to the society in which he had lived at Waverley-Honour) of a nature rather unfavourable to the existing government and dynasty.  He entered, therefore, without hesitation into the resentful feeling of the relations who had the best title to dictate his conduct, and not perhaps the less willingly when he remembered the tedium of his quarters, and the inferior figure which he had made among the officers of his regiment.  If he could have had any doubt upon the subject it would have been decided by the following letter from his commanding officer, which, as it is very short, shall be inserted verbatim:—­

Sir,—­

Having carried somewhat beyond the line of my duty an indulgence which even the lights of nature, and much more those of Christianity, direct towards errors which may arise from youth and inexperience, and that altogether without effect, I am reluctantly compelled, at the present crisis, to use the only remaining remedy which is in my power.  You 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.