Catriona

Catriona (Kidnapped2)

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Catriona, by Robert Louis Stevenson (#25 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
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Title: Catriona
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release Date: July, 1996 [EBook #589] [This file was first posted on May 15, 1996] [Most recently updated: May 20, 2002]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CATRIONA ***
Transcribed from the 1904 Cassell and Company edition by David Price, email [email protected]
CATRIONA
DEDICATION.
TO CHARLES BAXTER, Writer to the Signet.
My Dear Charles,
It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them; and my David, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre in the British Linen Company's office, must expect his late re-appearance to be greeted with hoots, if not with missiles. Yet, when I remember the days of our explorations, I am not without hope. There should be left in our native city some seed of the elect; some long-legged, hot-headed youth must repeat to-day our dreams and wanderings of so many years ago; he will relish the pleasure, which should have been ours, to follow among named streets and numbered houses the country walks of David Balfour, to identify Dean, and Silvermills, and Broughton, and Hope Park, and Pilrig, and poor old Lochend--if it still be standing, and the Figgate Whins--if there be any of them left; or to push (on a long holiday) so far afield as Gillane or the Bass. So, perhaps, his eye shall be opened to behold the series of the generations, and he shall weigh with surprise his momentous and nugatory gift of life.
You are still--as when first I saw, as when I last addressed you-- in the venerable city which I must always think of as my home. And I have come so far; and the sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me; and I see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny.
R. L. S. Vailima, Upolu, Samoa, 1892.
CATRIONA--
Part I--THE LORD ADVOCATE

CHAPTER I
--A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK
The 25th day of August, 1751, about two in the afternoon, I, David Balfour, came forth of the British Linen Company, a porter attending me with a bag of money, and some of the chief of these merchants bowing me from their doors. Two days before, and even so late as yestermorning, I was like a beggar-man by the wayside, clad in rags, brought down to my last shillings, my companion a condemned traitor, a price set on my own head for a crime with the news of which the country rang. To-day I was served heir to my position in life, a landed laird, a bank porter by me carrying my gold, recommendations in my pocket, and (in the words of the saying) the ball directly at my foot.
There were two circumstances that served me as ballast to so much sail. The first was the very difficult and deadly business I had still to handle; the second, the place that I was in. The tall, black city, and the numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world for me, after the moorland braes, the sea-sands and the still country-sides that I had frequented up to then. The throng of the citizens in particular abashed me. Rankeillor's son was short and small in the girth; his clothes scarce held on me; and it was plain I was ill qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter. It was plain, if I did so, I should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse in my case) set them asking questions. So that I behooved to come by some clothes of my own, and in the meanwhile to walk