It was evening when he approached the village of Tully-Veolan, with feelings and sentiments—­how different from those which attended his first entrance!  Then, life was so new to him that a dull or disagreeable day was one of the greatest misfortunes which his imagination anticipated, and it seemed to him that his time ought only to be consecrated to elegant or amusing study, and relieved by social or youthful frolic.  Now, how changed! how saddened, yet how elevated was his character, within the course of a very few months!  Danger and misfortune are rapid, though severe teachers.  ‘A sadder and a wiser man,’ he felt in internal confidence and mental dignity a compensation for the gay dreams which in his case experience had so rapidly dissolved.

As he approached the village he saw, with surprise and anxiety, that a party of soldiers were quartered near it, and, what was worse, that they seemed stationary there.  This he conjectured from a few tents which he beheld glimmering upon what was called the Common Moor.  To avoid the risk of being stopped and questioned in a place where he was so likely to be recognised, he made a large circuit, altogether avoiding the hamlet, and approaching the upper gate of the avenue by a by-path well known to him.  A single glance announced that great changes had taken place.  One half of the gate, entirely destroyed and split up for firewood, lay in piles, ready to be taken away; the other swung uselessly about upon its loosened hinges.  The battlements above the gate were broken and thrown down, and the carved bears, which were said to have done sentinel’s duty upon the top for centuries, now, hurled from their posts, lay among the rubbish.  The avenue was cruelly wasted.  Several large trees were felled and left lying across the path; and the cattle of the villagers, and the more rude hoofs of dragoon horses, had poached into black mud the verdant turf which Waverley had so much admired.

Upon entering the court-yard, Edward saw the fears realised which these circumstances had excited.  The place had been sacked by the King’s troops, who, in wanton mischief, had even attempted to burn it; and though the thickness of the walls had resisted the fire, unless to a partial extent, the stables and out-houses were totally consumed.  The towers and pinnacles of the main building were scorched and blackened; the pavement of the court broken and shattered, the doors torn down entirely, or hanging by a single hinge, the windows dashed in and demolished, and the court strewed with articles of furniture broken into fragments.  The accessaries of ancient distinction, to which the Baron, in the pride of his heart, had attached so much importance and veneration, were treated with peculiar contumely.  The fountain was demolished, and the spring which had supplied it now flooded the court-yard.  The stone basin seemed to be destined for a drinking-trough for cattle, from the manner in which it was arranged upon the ground.  The