The Dew of Their Youth

The loop of the riding-whip on Mr. Richard's wrist was broken, and behind his ear there was a lump the size of a small hen's egg. There were no signs of a struggle. The two men...

It was, I think, ten days after Agnes Anne had left us for the old house of the Maitlands when she came to me at the school-house. My father had Fred Esquillant in with him, and...

And now there was a second and longer probation in that gaunt town of Edinburgh, without any miniature to lie beside me on my work-table like a tickless watch, and help along th...

The firm of lawyers in Dumfries, the agents for the Maitland properties, did not seem to be taking any measures to dispossess Miss Irma and young Sir Louis. Perhaps they, too, h...

During the next three years (and that is a long driech time) I made many excuses for not going down to Eden Valley. I cannot say whether I managed to get myself believed or not....

"Well, at first I did not think much about anything" (said Agnes Anne), "except keeping quiet and doing what Duncan did not believe I could do. But I knew the wood. It was not s...

Never did I realize so clearly the difference between what interests the people in a great city and those inhabiting remote provinces as when, in mid-August, I took Irma and my...

As my grandmother and I went down the little loaning from Heathknowes Farm she had an eye for everything. She "shooed" into duty's path a youngling hen with vague maternal aspir...

"What is it, then?" I asked, more and more amazed at the turn things were taking. Never had I thought for a moment that Charlotte would not be as pleased and happy to have me as...

In other words, she had noticed that lawyers sat much in their offices, twiddling with papers, and that they never went haymaking nor stood erect in carts dumping manure on the...

But the country was by no means so craven as Lalor supposed. There were bold hearts and ready saddles still in Galloway. The signal from the top of the beacon tower of Marnhoul...

I, Duncan MacAlpine, school-master's son and uncovenanted assistant to my father, stood watching the dust which the Highflyer coach had left between me and Sandy Webb, the littl...

Though, therefore, the mystery remained as impenetrable as ever, I think that the fact of the absence of Lalor Maitland put new vigour into all of us. Richard Poole was buried i...

"How do I ken--fine that!" snapped Jen. "Do I no see my favourite check pattern on his trousers!" said Jen, which, indeed, being plain to the eye of every beholder, admitted of...

honest, far-seeing, cautious men, slow of action, slower still of speech--not at all to be judged by the standard of the richest of them, Mr. Josiah Kettle. He was, in fact, a m...

Old Robert Anderson of Birkenbog was known to me by sight--a huge, jovial, two-ply man, chin and waistcoat alike testifying to good cheer. He wore a large horse-shoe pin in his...

No word or look included me in the invitation which Miss Irma tendered to my grandmother. Nevertheless I followed, not knowing what else to do. I felt huge, awkward, clumsy of b...

We went up the narrow stair--that is, Miss Irma and I--because, since I carried my father's blunderbuss, Agnes Anne would not come, but stopped half-way, where the little Louis...

Of course Christmas time soon came, when we collegers had our first vacation, and Fred and I footed it down to Eden Valley. They had been preparing for us, and the puddings, whi...

"There is no use talking" (said my grandmother, as she always did when she was going to do a great deal of it), "no, listen to me, there is no use talking! These two young thing...

I arrived at Edinburgh with the most astonishing ache in my heart (or, at least, in the parts adjoining), and had I met with the least pitifulness I think I should have broken d...

Never was anything seen like it in our time. I mean the transformation of Aunt Jen, the hard crabapple of our family, after the entrance of the Maitland children into the househ...

The idea of Irma's danger on the open house-top and in the full glare of the beacon acted on me like a charm--yet people will say that there is nothing at all in such a relation...

During my holidays at Heathknowes I found myself necessarily in frequent communication with my Lord Advocate. For though I was the actual, he was the ultimate editor of the _Uni...

On the 19th of October the sky overhead was clear as sapphire, but all round the circle of the horizon the mists of autumn blurred the landscape. The hills stood no more in thei...

At last--at last! The door between the seniors and Mr. Stephen's juniors was thrown open. My father, making his usual formal bow to his assistant, said, "When you are ready, Mr....

Though Boyd Connoway had not said anything directly threatening the house of Heathknowes or its inmates, his story of his own "conversion" and the death of Dick Wilkes under the...

Now I have never to this day been able to make up my mind whether the Lady Kirkpatrick was really stirred with such anger as she pretended, whether she was only more than a litt...

Through the deep solitude of Tereggles Long Wood, past lonely lochs on which little clattering ripples were blowing, into a west that was all barred gold and red islands of fire...

"The strongest mental tonic in the world is solitude, but it takes a strong mind, fully equipped with thoughts, aims, work, to support it long without suffering. But once a man...

I did not tell Irma, and I enjoined silence on all about the house. But there was no keeping such a thing, and perhaps it was as well. Jo Kettle's father, always keen to show hi...

"And her to come of decent folk down there by Killibegs," he exclaimed in opening the matter; "no rapparees out of Connemara--but O'Neil's blood to a man, both Bridget and all h...

So in time we ran to Dumfries. And my grandfather put up at a hostelry in English Street, where were many other conveyances with their shafts canted high in the air, the day bei...

I knew that the Yule Fair was going on down in the village, and that on account of it all Eden Valley was in an uproar. The clamour was deafening at the lower end of the "clacha...

We were poor, very poor indeed in these days. Irma had many a wrinkled brow and many an anxious heart over the weekly expenses--so much to be set aside for rent, so much for mys...

We sat so long that I grew hungry. And then forethought was rewarded. For as I well knew, Agnes Anne had much ado to keep the house supplied (and the larder too often bare with...

Meanwhile Boyd Connoway was in straits. Torn between two emotions, he was pleased for once to have found a means of earning his living and that of his family--especially the lat...

"I wonder," said Irma one Saturday morning when, by a happy accident, I had no pressing need to go from home, so could stay and linger over breakfast with my little wife like a...

Irma and I had a great seeking for the little house, great enough for two, with such convenience as, at the time, could be called modern, and yet within reach of our very modera...

One of the peering faces was hot and angry, bearded too, which few then used to do except such as followed the sea. The other was dark and beaked like a hawk, so that the shadow...

But Bridget Connoway, instant and authoritative as she was, could not prevent her down-trodden husband from thinking. Who was the mysterious wounded man "down-the-house"? One of...

"My name is Irma Maitland, and this is my brother Louis!" Such were the famous words with which, in response to law and order in the person of Constable Jacky Black, the tall sm...

Governed, you say? Was it not within the King's dominions, and governed like every other part of these his Majesty's kingdoms? Had we of the Wide Valley risen against constitute...