The Interloper

WHEN the morning of the seventh of April broke over Speid and his companions, they lashed the damaged pole together with a coil of rope and harnessed the wheelers. Progress was...

THE vehicle used by Captain Somerville on his tours of inspection was standing in the Whanland coach-house; it was an uncommon-looking concern, evolved from his own brain and bu...

HALF-WAY up the east coast of Scotland, the estuary of the North Lour cuts a wide cleft in an edge of the Lowlands, and flows into the North Sea among the sands and salmon nets.

GILBERT SPEID sat in the house just outside Madrid, which had represented home to him for most of the eighteen months of his sojourn in Spain; he was newly returned from Granada...

INLAND from the river’s mouth the dark plough-fields stretched sombre, restful, wide, uncut by detail. The smaller roads intersecting the country were treeless in the main, and...

THE outward signs of Lady Eliza’s wrath endured for a few days after Crauford’s untimely mistake, and then began to die a lingering death; but her determination that the enemy s...

LADY ELIZA LAMONT splashed along the road and over the bridge; her heart was beating under the outlandish waistcoat, and behind her red face, so unsuggestive of emotion of any s...

THE next day broke cold and stormy and driving rain sped past the windows of the Stirks’ cottage. In the morning Jimmy set out, having decided to go afoot and to return with Gil...

THE January morning was moist and fresh as Lady Eliza and Cecilia Raeburn, with a groom following them, rode towards that part of the country where the spacious pasture-land beg...

IN an upper room, whose window looked into a mass of bare branches, Lady Eliza lay dying. This last act she was accomplishing with a deliberation which she had given to nothing...

SPEID stood at the corner of a field, in the place from which he had looked up the river with Barclay on the day of his arrival. His steps were now often turned in that directio...

THE woman who lay in her grave by the sands had rested there for nearly thirty years when her son stood in the grass to read her name and the date of her death. The place had be...

IF an Englishman’s house is his castle, a Scotchman’s cottage is his fortress. The custom prevailing in England by which the upper and middle classes will walk, uninvited and un...

MRS. SOMERVILLE retired from the breakfast-room in the height of ill-humour: it was not often that her husband spoke to her in so plain a manner and she was full of resentment....

SPEID rode home without seeing a step of the way, though he never put his horse out of a walk; he was like a man inheriting a fortune which has vanished before he has had time t...

THE yellow cabriolet stood at the entrance to the close. The iron-gray mare, though no longer in her first youth, abhorred delay, and was tossing her head and moving restlessly,...

THERE are some periods in life when the heart, from very excess of misery, finds a spurious relief; when pain has so dulled the nerves, that, hoping nothing, fearing nothing, we...

AGNETA and Mary Fordyce were in the drawing-room of Fordyce Castle, an immensely solemn apartment rendered more so by the blinds which were drawn half-mast high in obedience to...

TO say that the Miss Robertsons were much respected in Kaims was to give a poor notion of the truth. The last survivors of a family which had lived--and, for the most part, died...

‘Your letter, with the very important matter it contains, took me somewhat by surprise, for although you had mentioned the name of the young lady and that of Lady Eliza Lamont,...

MR. BARCLAY held the happy position of chief bachelor in the polite circles of Kaims. Although he had viewed with displeasure the advent of a young and sporting banker and the p...

CECILIA rose to meet a new day, each moment of which the coming years failed to obliterate from her memory. In the first light hours she had taken her happiness in her two hands...

WHEN the decisive step had been taken and Crauford’s perseverance was at last crowned with success, he straightway informed his uncle of his good fortune; also, he begged him to...

IT was six months since Gilbert Speid had gone from Whanland. Summer, who often lingers in the north, had stayed late into September, to be scared away by the forest fires of he...

LADY ELIZA LAMONT was like a person who has walked in the dark and been struck to the ground by some familiar object, the existence and position of which he has been foolish eno...

‘You are very good to have protected my property,’ she continued, looking at the two gentlemen. ‘All I can do now is to send for the police from Kaims, unless the dovecot is a s...

WHILE Granny had shaken the curtains in Gilbert’s bedroom her mind had worked as hard as her hands; there was no doubt in it of one thing; namely, that, by hook or by crook, he...

GILBERT was wrong in supposing he would arrive in Scotland on the very heels of his letter, for it reached Granny Stirk’s hands three days before the night which ended, for him,...

THOUGH Barclay had no intention of allowing the letter he carried to reach its final destination, he could not venture to stop its course till it had passed Fullarton’s hands. H...

HE who is restrained by a paternal law from attacking the person of his enemy need not chafe under this restriction; for he has only to attack him in the vanity, and the result,...