United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He had himself been dead some short time before; but in the course of their journey, in eschewing the high-road as much as possible, they found a good friend in a cottar who lived on the edge of the Mearns moor, and with him they were persuaded to bide till the day of that night when we met in so remarkable a manner on the sands of Ardrossan; and the cause that brought him there was one of the severest trials to which he had yet been exposed, as I shall now rehearse.
Mearns, call Malcolm to me; I must start for Edinburg immediately." In the interval Lord Cairnforth thought rapidly over what was best to be done. To go at once to Helen, whatever her misery was, appeared to him beyond question. To take Mr. Cardross in his present state, or the lad Duncan, was not desirable: some people, good as they may be, are not the sort of people to be trusted in calamity.
This loss he might have recovered by dint of severe economy, but on the breaking out of Argyle's rebellion, Dennis Bertram was again suspected by government, apprehended, sent to Dunnottar Castle on the coast of the Mearns, and there broke his neck in an attempt to escape from a subterranean habitation, called the Whigs' Vault, in which he was confined with some eighty of the same persuasion.
You must understand I've just retired from business, and I'm thinking of finding a country place. I used to have the provision shop in Mearns Street now the United Supply Stores, Limited. You've maybe heard of it?" The other bowed and smiled. "Who hasn't? The name of Dickson McCunn is known far beyond the city of Glasgow."
"You must know," he said, "our Scottish antiquaries have been greatly divided about the local situation of the final conflict between Agricola and the Caledonians; some contend for Ardoch in Strathallan, some for Innerpeffry, some for the Raedykes in the Mearns, and some are for carrying the scene of action as far north as Blair in Athole.
McCunn had given Tibby a letter to post. That morning he had received an epistle from a benevolent acquaintance, one Mackintosh, regarding a group of urchins who called themselves the "Gorbals Die-Hards." Behind the premises in Mearns Street lay a tract of slums, full of mischievous boys, with whom his staff waged truceless war.
The note of fear being once sounded, the visiters, as is generally the case in all tales of wonder, strove with each other who should witness the most extraordinary occurrences; and within a week, it was generally believed in the parishes of Banchory-Ternan, Drumoak, Durris, Kincardine-O'Neil, and all the circumjacent districts of Mearns and Aberdeenshire, that the devil had been seen in the act of hammering upon the house-top of Baldarroch.
"For that matter, Earnscliff," answered the freebooter, "I can answer to them that has better right to ask me than you have; but if you come with an armed force, and take her awa' from them that her friends lodged her wi', how will you answer THAT But it's your ain affair Nae single man can keep a tower against twenty A' the men o' the Mearns downa do mair than they dow."
And the lady had not the siller if she had pawned her gown; and they applied to the governor o' Stirling castle, and to the major o' the Black Watch; and the governor said, it was ower far to the northward, and out of his district; and the major said, his men were gane hame to the shearing, and he would not call them out before the victual was got in for all the Cramfeezers in Christendom, let alane the Mearns, for that it would prejudice the country.
On Saturday at half-past eleven, to the accompaniment of a glass of dubious sherry, he had completed the arrangements by which the provision shop in Mearns Street, which had borne so long the legend of D. McCunn, together with the branches in Crossmyloof and the Shaws, became the property of a company, yclept the United Supply Stores, Limited.
Word Of The Day