The Rhymer

She only looked at them a moment, just till the clock struck. Then they moved with a start, and she also moved forward, until she too stood in the circle of light. Petrified, th...

Thus would these two swear an eternal friendship, over and over again. Alison heard more, also--heard a great deal, indeed, about the wondrous ploughman poet, whose image seemed...

''Tis a fine clear evening to take the air,' said Herries, 'and if Miss Graham walks, may I have the honour to escort her to the Potterrow?' His glance was searching hers. His e...

In the meantime, Alison's lover had gone home, far more deeply perturbed than she, because totally in the dark, and because he had not, as had the woman he loved, the solid grou...

'Oh, you think of my cousin,' said Herries, coolly. 'But she dare not try these tricks; she understands too well the delicacy and instability of her present situation, she knows...

With such plainness was the much-tried mother of many daughters driven to address their exasperating father. The laird laughed: but then and there a serious marital tussle began...

'It was Jean sent us to ask you that,' said Willy, innocently. 'I sleep with mother, you know, and Danny by Jean in the other room, but mother says the lady will want Jean's bed...

Alison never doubted that, first in Nancy's mind, as she spoke, and first in her own, was the thought of that eternal commerce with St. James's Square. It throve apace, like som...

But 'Clarinda' had not met her 'Sylvander' at this date, and was merely a little grass-widow, in rather doubtful circumstances, and a guest at The Mains. She tuned herself to he...

'You'd be astonished how long they keep their heat, too,' Herries said to Alison. 'We'll put one in your muff, and you'll see how 'twill keep your hands warm all the way home.'...

'Indeed!' said Nancy, meekly, gathering up her forces for the fray, and rapidly coming to the conclusion that meekness would suit her best; if feeble as a weapon, it would at le...

But this--this deathlike image--could it indeed be Robert Burns? The last time that Herries had seen him--that only too memorable time--he had been in the hey-day of his splendi...

Herries stood on the hearth, looking down at his cousin with his cool, critical, half-satirical regard. Her little innocent arts, so infallible, as a rule, in the conquest of hi...

'The world may call me poor,' she said, 'but I'm not too poor to have the luxury of giving to those I love--once and away. And, child, if you say one word about it--make one obj...

In the year of grace 1787, Mr. Graham of The Mains, a worthy gentleman and laird of the county of Perth, had a family of seven daughters. This, though hardly at that date amount...

So Herries came always on these evenings when the exemplary Nancy, who was in her own peculiar fashion extremely pious, attended the lucubrations of her favourite divine. Those...

'You see, they love their little mother, Ally,' she said, and her eyes were full of tears. Alison cast a motherly eye upon the children. It was very late, she thought, in her ma...

'Your host is drunk,' he said to Alison, almost cavalierly. He had become icily cool, and the crisp tones of his business manner came to him, as though he stood in his own order...

Jacky wished to go and climb upon a wall which was being built round the old, and hitherto only hedged, garden. So far but a few yards had been completed--the broad parapet offe...