S. R. Crockett

“ Yet there was something pleasant about the place too, and if it had not been for the uncanny silence, I would have liked it well enough. The hills ran steeply up on both sides, brown with heather on the dryer knolls, and the bogs yellow and green with bracken and moss. The sheep wandered everywhere, creeping white against the hill-breast or standing black against the skyline. The whaups cried far and near. Snipe whinnied up in the lift. Magpies shot from thorn-bush to thorn-bush, and in the rose-bush by the door-cheek a goldfinch had built her nest. ”

“ There was again that irritating whispered converse, from which emerged the Hempie's clear voice:
"Oh, but my Harry will never be like that."
"Wait—only wait," said Nance. "Hempie, they are all alike. And besides, they write you such nice letters when they are away. I suppose you get one every day? Yes, of course. What, he walks six miles over the hill to post it? That is nice of him. Alec once came all the way from Edinburgh, and went back the next day, just because he thought I was cross with him——"
"Oh, but my Harry never, never——"
(Left speaking.) ”

“ Peter Chrystie, of Nether Neuk, if he did not put his hand in his breeches' pocket to some purpose.
"Will Alec let you come?" queried the Hempie, doubtfully. "He will miss you."
"Oh, I'll tell him it is for the sake of baby's health," said Nance; "and, besides, husbands are all the better for being left alone occasionally. They are so nice when they get you back again."
"What!" cried the Hempie, "you don't mean to say that Alec has fits of temper? ”

“ Craignesslin, you know, is a great house, with many of the rooms unoccupied, sitting high up on the hills, a place where all the winds blow, and where the trees are mostly scrubby scrunts of thorn, turning up their branches like skeleton hands asking for alms, or shrivelled birches and cowering firs all bent away from the west. ”

“ She told me how some years ago her poor husband, Major Fergus, had had a dreadful accident. He was not only disfigured, but the shock had affected his brain.
"'At first,' she said, 'we thought of sending him to an asylum, but we could not find one exactly suited to his case. Besides which, his old nurse, Betty Hearseman, who had always had great influence with him, was wild to be allowed to look after him. She is not quite right in the head herself, but most faithful and kind. ”

“ There was a muffled sound as of some one falling forward. The jingling sound became momentarily louder than ever, to which succeeded a rasping and a fumbling. Something or some one had tripped over my box, and was now examining it in a blind way.
"I stood turned to stone, with one hand on the cold mantelpiece and the other on my heart to still the painful beating.
"Then I heard the shuffling coming nearer again, and presently the door lurched forward violently. It did not open as an intelligent being would have opened a door. ”

“ They had been having a rough-and-tumble, and their hair was all about their faces. So in a little we were great friends. They went up to the nursery with their grandmother, and I was following more slowly, when all at once, Harry—I mean the young man—came hurrying in, carrying a tray. ”

“ Above one of them I made out the date 1658, and over the door were carven the letters W.F.
"Then I minded the tales my father used to tell in the winter forenights, of Wicked Wat Fergus of Craignesslin, how he used to rise from his bed and blow his horn and ride off to the Whig-hunting with Lag and Heughan, how he kept a tally on his bed-post of the men he had slain on the moors, making a bigger notch all the way round for such as were preachers.
"And while I was thinking all this, I stood knocking for admission. I could not hear a living thing move about the place. The bell would not ring. ”

“ I think she felt the fresh breeze blow in from the heather. Her groping hand went through the little hinged lattice I had opened. She started back.
"'Who has opened the window?' she said. 'Surely he has not been here! Perhaps he has escaped! ”