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Updated: May 1, 2025
The prizes were the gift of the great Duke of Ardshiel, and were to take the form of lockets with the Duke's own crest set on them in sparkling diamonds. The girls were to choose their own subjects, and in especial were to choose their own ordeal for the final test of valour, no one interfering with them or influencing their choice. These prizes the Duke promised to present year after year.
Wild indeed was the excitement when the facts of that terrible night were known; when the Duke of Ardshiel himself, who was to give away the prizes the beautiful prizes with his Grace's crest arrived on the scene and found no Hollyhock, but a distracted head-mistress and a lot of miserable-looking girls.
You must get her to school, Miss Jasmine; you must get her to school, Miss Gentian. 'Of course we must, Duncan, said Jasmine; 'and, oh! it is a right splendid school. 'I'm thinkin' that mysel', said Duncan, 'for Magsie, she came ower one nicht and declared that there was not the like o' Ardshiel in the length and breadth o' bonnie Scotland. But dear, dear, I was like to forget.
'Ardshiel, she remarked, 'is your purse still wide open? 'For you, my lassie; for you. 'But I want it to be wide open for another, said Holly. 'Well, I must do as you wish, Hollyhock, my blessing. I suppose you want me to' 'Hark and I 'll tell you, said Hollyhock, putting her pretty mouth to the old man's ear.
A gentleman, named James Stewart, a natural brother of Ardshiel, the forfeited person, was tried as being accessory to the murder, and condemned and executed upon very doubtful evidence; the heaviest part of which only amounted to the accused person having assisted a nephew of his own, called Allan Breck Stewart, with money to escape after the deed was done.
One condition he made that a girl who won a gold and diamond locket might try again, but could not win a second locket; if successful, she would receive in its place what was called 'A Scroll of Honour, which was to be signed by the great Ardshiel himself.
"But if I may make so bold as ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell you. I am King's factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve flies of soldiers at my back." "I have heard a waif word in the country," said I, a little nettled, "that you were a hard man to drive."
'Well, said Hollyhock haltingly, 'I somehow it seems hard on Mrs Macintyre, doesn't it? 'Not a bit of it, dear. Why, it's the making of her school. She has got so many applications for girlies like yourself to go to Ardshiel that she soon will have to close her lists.
'Whisper now, lassies. Do you not know that "the oak shall go over the myrtle yet"? We will settle some of the poor English girls yet. All the same, I like the really nice English girls ever so well. They are so bonnie and so gentle, like my own sweet sister Jasmine. Where could you see her like anywhere? And there is my own kinsman, the Duke of Ardshiel! Ah! but I love him well!
George Lennox, whose dead wife had been a Cameron a near relative of the head of the great house of Ardshiel bade his sister a most affectionate good-night, and returned to The Garden with his five bonnie lassies.
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