with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the crossbow. In one
spot, distinguished by a moss-grown Gothic monument, which retained the
name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said to have pierced
seven bucks with her own arrows. This was a very favourite haunt of
Waverley. At other times, with his gun and his spaniel, which served
as an apology to others, and with a book in his pocket, which perhaps
served as an apology to himself, he used to pursue one of these long
avenues, which, after an ascending sweep of four miles, gradually
narrowed into a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woody
pass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and
small lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood Mere. There stood,
in former times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by the
water, which had acquired the name of the Strength of Waverley, because,
in perilous times, it had often been the refuge of the family. There, in
the wars of York and Lancaster, the last adherents of the Red Rose
who dared to maintain her cause, carried on a harassing and predatory
warfare, till the stronghold was reduced by the celebrated Richard of
Gloucester. Here, too, a party of cavaliers long maintained themselves
under Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt
Rachel commemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to
'chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' and, like a child among his
toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless imagery and
emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as brilliant and
as fading as those of an evening sky. The effect of this indulgence upon
his temper and character will appear in the next chapter.



CHAPTER V