. 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.

Without a pause, therefore, Edward wrote a few cold lines, thanking his
lieutenant-colonel for past civilities, and expressing regret that he
should have chosen to efface the remembrance of them, by assuming a
different tone towards him. The strain of his letter, as well as what
he (Edward) conceived to be his duty, in the present crisis, called upon
him to lay down his commission; and he therefore enclosed the formal
resignation of a situation which subjected him to so unpleasant a
correspondence, and requested Colonel Gardiner would have the goodness
to forward it to the proper authorities.

Having finished this magnanimous epistle, he felt somewhat uncertain
concerning the terms in which his resignation ought to be expressed,
upon which subject he resolved to consult Fergus Mac-Ivor. It may
be observed in passing, that the bold and prompt habits of thinking,
acting, and speaking, which distinguished this young Chieftain, had
given him a considerable ascendancy over the mind of Waverley. Endowed
with at least equal powers of underst