The appearance of Waverley, embrowned by exercise, and dignified by
the habits of military discipline, had acquired an athletic and
hardy character, which not only verified the Colonel's narration, but
surprised and delighted all the inhabitants of Waverley-Honour. They
crowded to see, to hear him, and to sing his praises. Mr. Pembroke, who
secretly extolled his spirit and courage in embracing the genuine cause
of the Church of England, censured his pupil gently, nevertheless,
for being so careless of his manuscripts, which indeed, he said, had
occasioned him some personal inconvenience, as, upon the Baronet's being
arrested by a king's messenger, he had deemed it prudent to retire to a
concealment called 'The Priest's Hole,' from the use it had been put to
in former days; where, he assured our hero, the butler had thought it
safe to venture with food only once in the day, so that he had been
repeatedly compelled to dine upon victuals either absolutely cold, or,
what was worse, only half warm, not to mention that sometimes his
bed had not been arranged for two days together. Waverley's mind
involuntarily turned to the Patmos of the Baron of Bradwardine, who was
well pleased with Janet's fare, and a few bunches of straw stowed in
a cleft in the front of a sand-cliff: but he made no remarks upon a
contrast which could only mortify his worthy tutor.
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