Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years AgoOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
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Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Domestic fiction; Scotland -- Fiction
It was Glendochart who received his chief when he reached his journey’s
end, and told him the little there was to tell. It was supposed that
Lord John had somehow missed his footing when at the head of the linn.
Some one had heard the sound of a fall, and the body had been found
below at the foot of the waterfall. This was all that could be
discovered at the end of two or three days which had elapsed. The Duke
saw, with a natural pang, his dead son laid out upon the mistress’s bed,
and then he visited the scene of the tragedy. He inspected everything
with a clouded countenance, asking brief, sharp questions from time to
time. To Glendochart he seemed suspicious of violence and foul play, a
suspicion which was lurking in Glendochart’s own mind, with strange
surmises which he could not put into words, but which his mind was on
the alert to find some clue to. This, however, was scarcely the Duke’s
frame of mind. After he had visited the spot where the body had been
found, and looked up the foaming fall of the linn, and heard everything
that could be told him, he put a sudden question which dismayed
Glendochart. “Have you any suspicions?” he said. “Has there been any
suggestion--of violence?”
“The idea has no doubt been suggested,” Mr. Campbell replied, “but I can
find nothing to give it any countenance. There were signs as of stamping
of feet at one place near the fallen tree, but the man who found the
body accounted for that as having slipped and fallen there.”
“It has been suggested then?” said the Duke, with another cloud coming
over his face. “Glendochart, I may speak freely to you that would bring
no discredit on the name. Was there any story, any reason for his
staying here?”
Glendochart felt his countenance redden, though it was of that well-worn
colour which shows little. He suddenly realised, with a sense of relief
unspeakable, what it would have been had Lord John lived and thriven, to
have intimated to the chief that his son had married Drumcarro’s
daughter. Glendochart had himself been flattered by the idea. He saw the
reverse of the medal now.
“I know of none,” he said, “my Lord Duke. He was more at this house than
at any other house round about.”
“And there was no story--no lass, disappointed perhaps--or angry father?
You know what I mean, Glendochart. One of my own name, and not so far
from me in blood, I know that I can trust you. You know, too--what my
poor boy was.”
“I understand what your Grace means,” said Glendochart. “I have heard of
nothing of the kind.”
“And who was it that heard the fall?”
“It was my father-in-law, Drumcarro himself. He was taking his usual
walk. I don’t imagine he ever thought it was so serious. He called to
the man in the byre to see to it, that he thought he had heard a fall.”
“I will see Drumcarro. I suppose----”
“If it will satisfy your Grace better--but he is an old man, and much
shaken with his wife’s death which took place only a fortnight ago.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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