United States or Guam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Fine to think that the stackyard was safe and sheltered, and the beasts warm and well, were tearing away at their fodder all unconcerned, and that the sheep were in the low ground of many sheltering knowes and sturdy whin-bushes, comfortable as sheep could well be, and the thought came to me of how Belle was faring in her lonely sheiling.
In the gloaming I left the sheiling, and took my way through the hill, as we say, for McKinnon's house by the glen on the road to Birrican, and the first of that road is just plain guessing, but after, maybe, a mile there rises up the Mulloch Mhor, the big peak of the Island, and with that, a little to a man's left hand, the road to the sea is easy.
On entering their miserable sheiling, she found her father, who had just returned, and her step-mother in high words; the cause of which, she soon learned, had originated in his account of the interview between young Dalton and Mave Sullivan, together with its unpleasant consequences to himself. "What else could you expect," said his wife, "but what you got?
In many a sheiling and farmhouse old broadswords and muskets, well-hidden from the keen eye of the Government soldiers, were carefully cherished against the brave day when 'the king should have his own again. In 1744 that day seemed to have dawned to which Charles had all his life been looking forward.
He never seemed quite at one with the things of life and his 'bogle tales' of which I was so fond, all turned on the spirits of the dead coming again to visit those whom they had loved, and from whom they had been taken and he used to tell them with such passionate conviction that sometimes I trembled and wondered if any spirit were standing near us in the light of the peat fire, or if the shriek of the wind over our sheiling were the cry of some unhappy soul in torment.
What did she know about fishing? She had asked very sharply what brought him out to Castle Island on such a day. There was no use saying he didn't know; he never was able to keep a secret from Eliza, and feeling that he must confide in somebody, he told her he was tired of living at home, and was thinking of building a sheiling on the island.
Or, if by sickness he was forced to stay home, then she was out all day with the sheep alone. Gossip said that the young marquis visited the handsome shepherdess in her sheiling, and met her by appointment, when she was out with her flock. And as the occasion grew, so grew the scandal, and so grew indignation against the marquis and scorn of the shepherdess. "He'll nae mean to marry the quean!
Its presence proves that the squatter is not altogether a savage. Rude as is the interior of the sheiling, it contains a few relics of bygone, better days not spent there, but elsewhere. Some books are seen upon a little shelf the library of Lilian's mother and two or three pieces of furniture, that have once been decent, if not stylish.
The utmost secrecy was necessary; the men marched in dead silence. Not only did they avoid the high roads, but wherever a light showed the presence of a house or sheiling they had to make a wide circuit round it. The ground they had to go over was rough and uneven; every now and then the men splashed into unexpected bogs or stumbled over hidden stones.
Take plenty of things now, Hamish, and put them in the sheiling, for I am afraid this is going to be a wild night." Now, indeed, all the red light had gone away; and as the sun went down there was nothing but a spectral whiteness over the sea and the sky; and the atmosphere was so close and sultry that it seemed to suffocate one.
Word Of The Day