The lady starts up--a terrified menial
rushes in--but why pursue such a description?
As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our hero,
interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive domain that
surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, was
usually termed Waverley-Chase, had originally been forest ground, and
still, though broken by extensive glades, in which the young deer were
sporting, retained its pristine and savage character. It was traversed by
broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brush-wood, where the
beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag coursed
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.
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