John Splendid The Tale Of A Poor Gentleman And The Little Wars

To read this tale, dear Hugh, without any association of its incidents with the old respectable chronicles of the Historians is what I should wish you could always do. That is t...

Many a time, in college or in camp, I had planned the style of my home-coming. Master Webster, in the Humanities, droning away like a Boreraig bagpipe, would be sending my mind...

Every land, every glen or town, I make no doubt, has its own peculiar air or atmosphere that one familiar with the same may never puzzle about in his mind, but finds come over h...

“Foil, Elrigmore!” he cried. “But we’re soldiers and lads of the world, and you need hardly be so canny. You see MacCailein’s points as well as I do. His one weakness is the old...

Writing all this old ancient history down, I find it hard to riddle out in my mind the things that have really direct and pregnant bearing on the matter in hand. I am tempted to...

Of course Clan MacNicoll was brought to book for this frolic on Inneraora fair-day, banned by Kirk, and soundly beaten by the Doomster in name of law. To read some books I’ve re...

On the 27th of July in this same year 1644 we saw his lordship and his clan march from Inneraora to the dreary north. By all accounts (brought in to the Marquis by foot-runners...

The Highlanders of Lochaber, as the old saying goes, “pay their daughters’ tochers by the light of the Michaelmas moon.” Then it was that they were wont to come over our seven h...

Hard on the heels of the snow came a frost that put shackles on the very wind. It fell black and sudden on the country, turning the mud floors of the poorer dwellings into iron...

It came out years after, that one Angus Macalain, a Glencoe man, a branded robber off a respectable Water-of-Duglas family, had guided the main body of the invaders through the...

We made good speed up the burn-side, through the fields, and into the finest forest that was (or is to this day, perhaps) in all the wide Highlands. I speak of Creag Dubh, great...

This mount of Dunchuach, on which we now found ourselves ensconced, rises in a cone shape to a height of about eight hundred feet, its bottom being but a matter of a quarter-mil...

When the English minister, in his odd lalland Scots, had told us this tale of the dying MacDonald, I found for the first time my feeling to the daughter of the Provost of Innera...

I woke with a shiver at the hour before dawn, that strange hour when the bird turns on the bough to change his dream, when the wild-cat puts out his tongue to taste the air and...

In a few hours, as it were, the news that the enemy had left the country was put about the shire, and people returned to pick up the loose ends of the threads of family and affa...

The essence of all human melancholy is in the sentiment of farewells. There are people roving about the world, to-day here, to-morrow afar, who cheat fate and avoid the most poi...

We might well be at our prayers. Appin paid dearly for its merriment in the land of Cailein Mor, and the MacDonalds were mulct most generously for our every hoof and horn. For w...

He was a lantern-jawed, sallow-faced, high-browed fellow in his prime, with the merest hint of a hirple or halt in his walk, very shabby in his dress, wearing no sporran, but wi...

The month of January, as our old Gaelic notion has it, borrows three days from July for a bribe of three young lambs. Those three days we call Faoilteaeh, and often they are ver...

When we came up with the main body of MacDonald’s army, the country, as I say, was shining in the light of the moon, with only a camp-fire down in the field beside the castle to...

At last there was but one horseman in chase of the six men who were fleeing without a look behind them--a frenzied blackavised trooper on a short-legged garron he rode most clum...

From where the wildfowl rose, the Dame Dubh, as we called the old woman of Carnus, came in our direction, half-running, half-walking through the snow. She spied us while she was...

Of the seven of us, Stewart was the only one with a notion of the lie of the country. He had bought cattle in the glen, and he had borrowed (as we may be putting it) in the same...

The rain that was a smirr or drizzle on the north side of Glencoe grew to a steady shower in the valley itself, and when we had traversed a bit in the airt of Tynree it had beco...

It may seem, in my recounting of these cold wanderings, of days and nights with nothing but snow and rain, and always the hounds of fear on every hand, that I had forgotten to e...

“Let me get at him and I’ll set him in the way of putting the last truth of his trade to its only test,” said he, still with a face corp-white, tugging at my hold and eyeing Mas...

Tynree is the Gaelic of a name that in the English is King’s House. What humour gave so gaudy a title to so humble a place I have been always beat to know. For if the poorest of...

I stood on the hillock clothed with its stunted saughtrees and waited for the day that was mustering somewhere to the cast, far by the frozen sea of moss and heather tuft. A sea...

We got a cold welcome from the women of our own clan and country. They had been very warm and flattering as we passed north--the best they had was not good enough for us; now th...

This need for waiting upon his lordship so soon after the great reverse was a sour bite to swallow, for M’Iver as well as myself. M’Iver, had he his own way of it, would have me...

I dressed myself up in the morning with scrupulous care, put my hair in a queue, shaved cheek and chin, and put at my shoulder the old heirloom brooch of the house, which, with...

On some days I kept to Glen Shim as the tod keeps to the cairn when heather burns, afraid almost to let even my thoughts wander there lest they should fly back distressed, to sa...

We went along the road two and two, M’Iver keeping company behind with the valet, who would have stabbed me in the back in all likelihood ere we had made half our journey, had t...

Young Lachie did not bide long on our side of the water: a day or two and he was away back to his people, but not before he and I, in a way, patched up once more a friendship th...

On the morrow, John Splendid came riding up the street on his way to the foreign wars. He had attired himself most sprucely; he rode a good horse, and he gave it every chance to...