United States or Nauru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I happen to know that those papers are in your pocket at this moment, a fact which shows how watchful an eye we've been keeping upon you of late. You have brought them here so that your friend Krail may come to terms with Sir Henry for their repossession. He arrived from London with you, and is at the 'Strathavon Arms' in the village, where he stayed before, and is well known."
Stokes the chauffeur had driven Murie and Hamilton in the car down to the village, where the last-named, after a conversation with the police inspector, went to the "Strathavon Arms," together with two constables who happened to be off duty, in plain clothes. They found Krail sitting in the bar, calmly smoking, awaiting a message from his accomplice.
There was once a woman, who lived in the Camp-del-more of Strathavon, whose cattle were seized with a murrain, or some such fell disease, which ravaged the neighbourhood at the time, carrying off great numbers of them daily.
A few prisoners were picked up, and among them one King, a noted orator of the conventicles, formerly chaplain to Lord Cardross, whose service he had left, it is said, on account of a little misadventure with one of the maid-servants. The troops halted for the night at Strathavon, and early next morning set off with their prisoners for Glasgow.
The servitors had cleared the great hall, and here on a dais, raised above the "marsh" and sheltered by an arras curtain hastily arranged, James the Gross slept on a soft French bed, which he had caused to be brought all the way from his castle of Strathavon on the moors of Lanarkshire. In the Earl's chamber on the third floor was lodged the Marshal de Retz.
The family traditions and history of the old place and its owners had induced Sir Henry Heyburn, himself a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, to purchase it from Lord Strathavon, into whose possession it had passed some forty years previously.
Occasionally she would grant to some noble of high rank the honor of walking at her side; but it was remarked that those whom she thus distinguished were often foreigners; some English noblemen, such as the Duke of Dorset and Lord Strathavon being especially favored, for a reason which, as given by Mercy, shows that that insular stiffness which, with national self-complacency, Britons sometimes confess as a not unbecoming characteristic, was not at that time attributed to them by others; since the ambassador explains the queen's preference by the self-evident fact that the English gentlemen were the best dancers, and made the best figure in the ball-room.
In his declining years the life of this man was a pitiful tragedy, his filmy eyes sightless, his thin white fingers ever eager and nervous, his hours full of deep thought and silent immobility. To him, what was the benefit of that beautiful Perthshire castle which he had purchased from Lord Strathavon a year before his compulsory retirement?
At Strathavon the townspeople drew out to bar their passage, but the fear of their pursuers lent the flying troopers fresh heart: "we took courage," writes Claverhouse, "and fell to them, made them run, leaving a dozen on the place." Through Strathavon they clattered, and never drew rein till they found themselves safe in Glasgow among their own comrades.
To those who had made mention of the Whispers among them his friend Murie, the Laird of Connachan; Lord Strathavon, from whom he had purchased the estate; and several of the neighbouring landowners he had always expressed a hope that one day he might be fortunate enough to hear the whispered counsel of the Evil One, and so decide for himself its true cause.
Word Of The Day