Spirit of Chambers's Journal : $b Original tales, essays, and sketches, selected from that workChambers, Robert
General
Spirit of Chambers's Journal : $b Original tales, essays, and sketches, selected from that work
Chambers, Robert
English literature -- Scottish authors
He there discovered that Helen had
been locked up by her father, who had found reason to suspect her
intention of eloping, and that this was what occasioned her departure
from the mode of escape previously agreed upon. After depositing her
still inanimate person carefully on a bed, he turned for a moment
towards her father, told him fiercely that if he exercised any cruelty
upon her in consequence of what had taken place, he should dearly rue
it; and then, alter taking another silent, lingering, farewell look of
his mistress, left the house in order to continue his march.
After this, another and longer interval occurs between the incidents of
our tale; and this may perhaps be profitably employed in illustrating
a few of the circumstances already laid partially before the reader.
William Douglas was a younger son of Sir Robert Douglas of Glenbervie,
the celebrated antiquary, and had been bred to the profession of a
writer, or attorney, under the auspices of a master of good practice in
Aberdeen. Being, however, a youth of sanguine temperament and romantic
spirit, he did not hesitate a moment, on hearing of the landing of
the chevalier, to break his apprenticeship, just on the point of
expiring, and set off to rank himself under the banners of him whom he
conceived entitled to the duty and assistance of all true Scotsmen.
In consideration of his birth, and his connection with some of the
very highest leaders in the enterprise, he was appointed aide-de-camp
to the prince, in which capacity he had been employed to communicate
with the city in the manner already described. As he rode up the High
Street, and, more than that, as he rode down again, he had been seen
and admired by Helen Lindsay, who happened to be then in the house of a
friend near the scene of his exploit. Soon after the Highland army had
taken possession of the city, they had met at the house of a Jacobite
aunt of the young lady, and a passion of the tenderest nature then
took place between them. To her father, who was her only surviving
parent, this was quite unknown till the day before the departure of the
Highlanders, when some circumstances having roused his suspicions, he
thought it necessary to lock her up in her own room, without, however,
securing the window—that part of a house, so useful and so interesting
above all others to youthful lovers, the chink of Pyramus and Thisbe
not excepted. It only remains to be stated, that though the young lady
recovered from the effects of her fall in a few weeks, she did not so
soon recover from her disappointment, and she was doomed to experience
a still greater affliction in the strange look with which she was
afterwards regarded by her father and all her own acquaintance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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