Produced by Paul Haxo with special thanks to the New York Public Library, the HathiTrust Digital Library, and Google.
AUTHOR OF "THE INTERLOPER," "THE SHEEP-STEALERS," &c.
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1911
THIS book has no claim to be considered an historical novel, none of the principal people in it being historic characters; but the taking of the ship, as also the manner of its accomplishment, is true. V. J.
I. PROLOGUE 1 II. JETSAM 16 III. A COACH-AND-FIVE 30 IV. BUSINESS 46 V. "THE HAPPY LAND" 64 VI. IN DARKNESS AND IN LIGHT 72 VII. TREACHERY 84 VIII. THE HEAVY HAND 100 IX. "TOUJOURS DE L'AUDACE" 124
X. ADRIFT 135 XI. THE GUNS OF MONTROSE 150 XII. INCHBRAYOCK 161 XIII. THE INTERESTED SPECTATOR 177 XIV. IN SEARCH OF SENSATION 185 XV. WATTIE HAS THEORIES 200 XVI. THE TWO ENDS OF THE LINE 212 XVII. SOCIETY 222 XVIII. BALNILLO FINDS PERFECTION 234
XIX. THE WINTER 251 XX. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 263 XXI. HUNTLY HILL 280 XXII. HUNTLY HILL (_continued_) 288 XXIII. THE MUIR OF PERT 299 XXIV. THE VANITY OF MEN 313 XXV. A ROYAL DUKE 327 XXVI. THE VANISHING BIRD 335 XXVII. EPILOGUE 346
MR. DUTHIE walked up the hill with the gurgle of the burn he had just crossed purring in his ears. The road was narrow and muddy, and the house of Ardguys, for which he was making, stood a little way in front of him, looking across the dip threaded by the water. The tall white walls, discoloured by damp and crowned by their steep roof, glimmered through the ash-trees on the bank at his right hand. There was something distasteful to the reverend man's decent mind in this homely approach to the mansion inhabited by the lady he was on his way to visit, and he found the remoteness of this byway among the grazing lands of Angus oppressive.
The Kilpie burn, travelling to the river Isla, farther west, had pushed its way through the undulations of pasture that gave this particular tract, lying north of the Sidlaws, a definite character; and the formation of the land seemed to suggest that some vast ground-swell had taken place in the earth, to be arrested, suddenly, in its heaving, for all time. Thus it was that a stranger, wandering about, might come unwarily upon little outlying farms and cottages hidden in the trough of these terrestrial waves, and find himself, when he least awaited it, with his feet on a level with some humble roof, snug in a fold of the braes. It was in one of the largest of these miniature valleys that the house of Ardguys stood, with the Kilpie burn running at the bottom of its sloping garden.