Edward Waverley found his regiment quartered at Dundee in Scotland, but, the time being winter and the people of the neighbourhood not very fond of the "red soldiers," he did not enjoy the soldiering life so much as he had expected. So, as soon as the summer was fairly come, he asked permission to visit the Castle of Bradwardine, in order to pay his respects to his uncle's friend.

It was noon of the second day after setting out when Edward Waverley arrived at the village of Tully-Veolan to which he was bound. Never before had he seen such a place. For, at his uncle's house of Waverley-Honour, the houses of villagers, all white and neat, stood about a village green, or lurked ancient and ivy-grown under the shade of great old park trees. But the turf-roofed hovels of Tully-Veolan, with their low doors supported on either side by all too intimate piles of peat and rubbish, appeared to the young Englishman hardly fit for human beings to live in. Indeed, from the hordes of wretched curs which barked after the heels of his horse, Edward might have supposed them meant to serve as kennels—save, that is, for the ragged urchins who sprawled in the mud of the road and the old women who, distaff in hand, dashed out to rescue them from being trampled upon by Edward's charger.