The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story

“There’s aye plenty fools in this world,” said bowed Jaaoob; “a’thing else that’s human fails; but that commodity’s aye ready. I had my hopes of that laddie Livingstone. He has...

In the meantime, Cosmo, angry with himself and everybody else, went into Edinburgh to his weekly labor. It was such lovely summer weather, that even Edinburgh, being a town, was...

Katie Logan was by herself in the manse parlor. Though the room was as bright as ever, the little housekeeper did not look so bright. She was darning the little stockings which...

The next day Cameron came up stairs to Cosmo’s room, where the lad was writing by the window, with an open letter in his hand and rather a comical expression on his face.

For these five years had not been so peaceful as their predecessors--the face of this home country was much changed to some of the old dwellers here. Dr. Logan, old and well-bel...

Day by day, the summer went over Cosmo’s head, leaving his thoughts in the same glow and tumult of uncertainty, for which, now and then, the lad blamed himself bitterly, but whi...

On one of these days Cameron came again to Cosmo with a letter in his hand. His look was very different now--it was grave, resolute, determined, as of a man on the verge of a ne...

The pace of events began to quicken with Cosmo. When he encountered his fellow-lodger in the evening, he found that Cameron had been permitting his temptation to gain more and m...

Those slow days of household gloom and darkness, when death lies in the house, and every thought and every sound still bears an involuntary reference to the solemn inmate, resti...

Common daylight, common life, the dead buried out of their sight, the windows open, the servants coming to ask common questions about the cattle and the land. Nothing changed, e...

“Happened!” said bowed Jaacob, with a little scorn; “what should have happened?--you dinna ca’ this place in the world--naething, so far as I can tell, ever happens here except...

At Norlaw every thing was very quiet, very still, in this early winter. The “beasts” were thriving, the dairy was prosperous, the Mistress’s surplus fund--spite of the fifty pou...

“Am I to understand that our title is somehow endangered? I do not quite comprehend your last letter,” said Oswald, addressing his father somewhat haughtily. They were in Melmar...

It was Sabbath morning, but it was not a morning of rest; though it was Huntley’s first day at home, and though it did his heart good to see his mother, the young man’s heart wa...

The day of the funeral rose with a merciful cloud over its brightness--a sorrowful bustle was in the house of Norlaw; some of the attendants of the burial train were to return t...

“I mean to call on Miss Logan at the manse to-day,” said Patricia Huntley, as she took her place with great dignity in “the carriage,” which she had previously employed Joanna t...

“Put on your bonnet, Katie, and come with me--the like of you should be able to be some comfort to that poor widow at Norlaw,” said Dr. Logan to his daughter, as they stood toge...

“Oh! Patricia! Sinclair has been telling me such a story,” cried a young girl, suddenly rushing upon another, in a narrow winding road through the woods which clothed a steep ba...

The streets of Edinburgh looked strange and unfamiliar to Cosmo Livingstone when he stood in them once more--a very _boy_ still in heart and experience, yet feeling himself a tr...

The result of this conversation was that Cosmo made a little private visit to Edinburgh to determine his own entrance into the republic of letters, and to see the enterprising p...

Dr. Logan was in his study writing his sermon--Katie was alone in the manse parlor. It was a cheerful room, looking over the little front garden and down the brae to the roofs o...

“A French governess!--she is not French, though she might be born in France. Anybody might be born in France,” said Patricia, with some scorn; “but her mother was Scotch--no, no...

Three months later, in the early sweetness of May, Cosmo Livingstone stood upon an “outside stair,” one of those little flights of stone steps, clearing the half-cellar shops of...

The speaker was Huntley of Melmar, seated at that moment in his large leathern easy-chair at his own study-table; this was a long dim room, lined with dusty-looking bookcases, a...

That same night, while they watched their dead at Melmar, the young moon shone kindly into the open parlor window of a pretty cottage, where some anxiety, but no sorrow was. Thi...

“The Reform Bill’s passed, mother! we’ve won the day!” cried Cosmo, rushing into the Norlaw dining-parlor with an additional hurra! of exultation. After all the din and exciteme...

The drawing-room of Melmar was a large room tolerably well furnished. Three long windows on one side of the apartment looked out upon the lawn before the house, carefully avoidi...

It was a kind of twilight in Aunt Jean’s room, though it was still daylight out of doors; the sun, as it drew to the west, threw a ruddy glory upon this side of the house of Mel...

Five years had made countless revolutions in human affairs, and changed the order of things in more houses than Melmar, but had not altered the fair face of the country, when, l...

The house of Cosmo’s residence was not a great enough house to boast a regular _portière_ or _concierge_. A little cobbler, who lived in an odd little ever-open room, on the gro...

“And so you’re the only ane of them left at hame?” said bowed Jaacob, looking up at Cosmo from under his bushy brows, and pushing up his red cowl off his forehead.

They were detained for some days waiting the sailing of the ship, which already the little party had gone over, the Mistress with awe and solemnity, the brothers with eager inte...

The voyage, as it happened, was a very favorable one--even the Mistress’s inland terrors were scarcely aroused by the swell of that summer sea; and Huntley himself, though his i...

Perhaps Cameron’s heart failed him as he came so near--at least Cosmo reached the house first. The foliage was so thick around that the darkness seemed double in this circle rou...

Madame Roche sat by herself in the drawing-room of Melmar--the same beautiful old lady who used to sit working behind the flowers and white curtains of the little second floor w...

The village lay bright under the afternoon sun when Huntley Livingstone came in sight of it that day. It was perfectly quiet, as was its wont--some small children playing at the...

“Do you think _I_ could bear the thought--me!” cried the Mistress energetically; “have ye kent me all your days, Huntley Livingstone, and do ye dare to think your mother would b...

The sunset glory of this January evening still shone over the tops of the trees upon the high bank of Tyne, leaving a red illumination among the winter clouds; but low upon the...

A very sadly different scene; no young hopes blossoming towards perfection--no young lives beginning--no joy--has called together this company, or makes this room bright; a dark...

The house of Norlaw stands upon the slope of a low hill, under shelter of the three mystic Eildons, and not very far from that little ancient town which, in the language of the...

It was frost, and Tyne was “bearing” at Kirkbride, where the village held a carnival of sliding and skating, and where even the national winter sport, the yearly curling matches...

While the peaceful Manse of Kirkbride was turned into a house of mourning, a strange little drama was being played at Melmar. The household there seemed gradually clustering, a...

It was Saturday night, and in little more than an hour after Huntley’s return, Cosmo had joined the little family circle. Cosmo was five years older by this time, three-and-twen...

Katie Logan looked up at her with some little doubt. She had come by herself to the manse, in advance of Joanna, who had been detained to accompany her sister. The two girls had...

The sun was shining into the west chamber at Norlaw. It was the room immediately over the dining-room, a large apartment, paneled and painted in a faint green color, with one wi...

While all these new events and changes were disturbing the quiet life of the home district at Melmar, and Norlaw, and Kirkbride, Cosmo Livingstone wandered over classic ground w...

Cosmo ran down the stairs, and out of the gate of Madame Roche’s house, much too greatly excited to think of returning to his little room. The discovery was so sudden and so ext...

Cosmo saw nothing more of Joanna Huntley, nor of her bright-eyed companion for a long time. He fell back into his old loneliness, with his high window, and his landlady, and the...

After a little time Desirée came to Melmar. She had been placed in charge of Mrs. Payne by an English lady, who had brought her from her home in France with the intention of mak...

It was a small apartment, originally intended for a dressing-room, and communicating by a door locked and barricaded on both sides with the east room, which was the guest-chambe...

“Well, Huntley, and what’s your opinion of our grand new neighbors?” said the Mistress. They were returning together on that same Monday from a formal call at Melmar; perhaps th...

Ere the winter had fully arrived, visible changes had taken place in the house and steading of Norlaw. As soon as all the operations of the harvest were over, the Mistress dismi...

It was very well for the Mistress’s spirit, though scarcely for her purse, that she was roused the next day to horror and indignation, scarcely restrainable, by the supposed exo...

Cosmo went home that evening much excited by his night’s adventures. Mrs. Payne, of Moray Place, was an ogre in the boy’s eyes, the Giantess Despair, holding bewitched princesse...

When Cosmo rushed forth from Melmar with his heart a-flame, and made his way out through the trees to the unsheltered and dusty highway, the sound of the Sabbath bells was just...

A series of violent scenes in Melmar made a fitting climax to this little episode in the wood. Desirée demanded an interview with Mrs. Huntley, and obtained it in that lady’s ch...

The end of the season arrived, Cosmo came home, leaving his fellow-student, who would not even accept an invitation to Norlaw, behind him in Edinburgh. Cameron thought it half a...

The Melmar family had just concluded their luncheon, and were still assembled in the dining-room--all but Mrs. Huntley, who had not yet come down stairs--when Desirée, flushed a...

Yet we do not see why we are called upon to defend Mrs. Livingstone, who was very well able, under most circumstances, to take care of herself. She did not by any means receive...

This story, which Mrs. Livingstone told with reluctance, and, in fact, did not tell half of, was, though the youths did not know it, the story of the very bitterest portion of t...

Half a mile below Norlaw, “as Tyne runs,” stood the village of Kirkbride. Tyne was but one of the many undistinguished Tynes which water the south of Scotland and the north of E...

For on Cosmo’s table lay a letter, newly arrived, and marked _immediate_. Cosmo felt himself forewarned by the sudden tremor which moved him, as he sprang forward to take it up,...

During all these months Desirée had led a strange life at Melmar. She had never told any one of the revelation, painful and undesired, the miserable enlightenment which Aunt Jea...

The presence of Desirée made no small sensation in the house of Norlaw, which did not quite know what to make of her. The Mistress herself, after that first strange impulse of k...

Sabbath night; a July night, sweet with summer stars and moonlight, and with no darkness in it: the water running soft with its quietest murmur, the thrush and blackbird beguile...

That night was a night of storms. When the heavy rain ceased, peals of thunder shook the house, and vivid lightning flashed through the darkness. When the funeral procession was...

Huntley could not see his mother after this outrage became known to her. The widow resented it with all a woman’s horror and passion, and with all the shame of a Scottish matron...

The Mistress traveled home once more by the slow canal to Edinburgh, and from thence by the stage-coach to Kirkbride. She had left Patie, at last, with some degree of confidence...

Cameron was not visible until the evening, when he sent for Cosmo to his own room. The lad obeyed the summons instantly; the room was rather a large one, very barely furnished,...

“Oh, papa,” cried Joanna Huntley, bursting into Melmar’s study like a whirlwind, “they’re ill-using Desirée! they shut her out at the door among a crowd, and they threw stones a...

“Go wherever you like, bairns, or travel straight on, if you please--I canna see a step before me, for my part--it’s you and no’ me that must take the lead,” said the Mistress,...

The days glided on imperceptibly over the travelers as they rested in St. Ouen--rested longer than there seemed any occasion for resting, and with so little inducement that Macg...

The morning brought feelings a little more endurable, yet still, very far from pleasant. Very early, while it was still dark, Cosmo saw his companions set off on their journey h...

It was accordingly but a very short time after these occurrences when Cosmo, with his wardrobe carefully over-looked, his “new blacks” supplemented by a coarser every-day suit,...

Huntley was busy in the out-buildings of the farm. He was taking an inventory of all their stock and belongings, and making such an estimate as he could, which was a very correc...

Mr. Cassilis came to the manse in answer to Katie’s invitation and the business of Huntley. He was young and did not particularly commend himself to the liking of the young mast...