"Stand Fast Craig Royston - Volume III" from William Black. Novelist (1841-1898).

On a certain cold evening in January, and just as the Scotch night-mail was about to start for the north, a stranger drove up to Euston and alighted, and was glad enough to escape from the chill draughts of the echoing station into the glow and warmth and comfort of a sleeping-car. He was a man of means apparently; for one half of this carriage, containing four berths, and forming a room apart, as it were, had been reserved for himself alone; while his travelling impedimenta-fur-lined coats and hoods and rugs and what not-were of an elaborate and sumptuous description. On the other hand,...

It can hardly be wondered at that these suddenly presented ambitious projects-this call to be up and doing, and getting forward in the general race of the world-should add a new interest and fascination, in his eyes, to the society of the American father and daughter who had wandered into these distant wilds. And perhaps, after all, he had been merely wasting his time and throwing away his life? That solitary, contented, healthy and happy existence was a mistake-an idle dream-an anachronism, even? The common way of the world was right; and that, as he heard of it in the echoes brought by...

It can hardly be wondered at that these suddenly presented ambitious projects-this call to be up and doing, and getting forward in the general race of the world-should add a new interest and fascination, in his eyes, to the society of the American father and daughter who had wandered into these distant wilds. And perhaps, after all, he had been merely wasting his time and throwing away his life?

"Well, Mary, it is a pretty plaything to have given you-a Highland estate -and no doubt all your fine schemes will come right. But you will have to change three things first." "Yes?" "And these are human nature and the soil and climate of Scotland." "Avaunt, Mephistopheles -and go and give that porter a shilling."

Black night lay over sea and land; there was a low continuous murmur round the rocks and shores; and out here, at the end of the little wooden quay, two men were slowly pacing up and down in the dark. They were the serious-visaged Coinneach Breac and his taller and younger companion Calum-a-Bhata. The whereabouts of the village, across the bay, was revealed by a solitary light in one of the windows: no doubt the man who looked after the pier was enjoying the comfort of his own home as long as was possible, before coming down to make ready for the expected steamer.

But that was not at all the view that Fred Stanley took of this amazing and incomprehensible incident. "There's some trick in it, Frank," he said vehemently, as he hurried his friend along with him, on their way back to the house. "There's some underhand trick in it, and I want to know what it means. I tell you, we must get the keepers, and go up the hill at once, and see what is going on. There's something at the bottom of all this jugglery."

On a certain sunny afternoon in May, when all the world and his wife were walking or driving in Piccadilly, two figures appeared there who clearly did not belong to the fashionable crowd. Indeed, so unusual was their aspect that many a swift glance, shot from carefully impassive faces, made furtive scrutiny of them as they passed. One of the strangers was an old man who might have been a venerable Scandinavian scald come to life again-a man thick-set and broad-shouldered, with features at once aquiline and massive, and with flowing hair and beard almost silver-white.

And at first Vincent was for rebelliously thrusting aside and ignoring this information that had reached him so unexpectedly. Was he, on the strength of a statement forwarded by an unknown correspondent in New York, to suspect-nay, to condemn unheard-this proud and solitary old man with whom he had all this while been on terms of such close and friendly intimacy? Had he not had ample opportunities of judging whether George Bethune was the sort of person likely to have done this thing that was now charged against him? He went over these past weeks and months.

One evening Mr. Courtnay Fox, the London correspondent of the Edinburgh Chronicle, was as usual in his own room in the office in Fleet-street, when a card was brought to him. "Show the gentleman up," said he to the boy. A couple of seconds thereafter Vincent Harris made his appearance. "Mr. Fox?" said he, inquiringly. The heavy-built journalist did not rise to receive his visitor; he merely said- "Take a chair. What can I do for you?"