The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love StoryCrockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
General
The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
Fiction; Love stories
Ralph pulled Jock Gordon off and flung him upon the heather, where
Jock Forrest set his foot upon him, and turned the light of the
lantern upon the fierce face of a maniac, foam-flecked and blood-
streaked. Jock still growled and gnashed his teeth, and struggled
in sullen fury to get at his fallen foe. With his hat Ralph
brought water from a deep moss-hole and dashed it upon the face of
Winsome. In a little while, she began to sob in a heartbroken way.
Meg took her head upon her knees, and soothed her mistress,
murmuring tendernesses. Next he brought water to throw over the
face and neck of Greatorix, which Jock Gordon in his fury had made
to look like nothing human.
The rest might wait. It was Ralph's first care to get Winsome
home. Kneeling down beside her he soothed her with whispered
words, till the piteous sobbing in her throat stilled itself. The
ploughman was at this moment stolidly producing pieces of rope
from his pockets and tying up Jock Gordon's hands and feet; but
after his first attempts again to fly at Greatorix, and his gasps
of futile wrath when forced into the soft moss of the moor by Jock
Forrest's foot, he had not offered to move.
His paroxysm was only one of the great spasms of madness which
sometimes come over the innocently witless. He had heard close by
him the cries of Winsome Charteris, whom he had worshipped for
years almost in the place of the God whom he had not the
understanding to know. The wonder rather was that he did not kill
Greatorix outright. Had it happened a few steps nearer the great
stone dyke, there is little doubt but that Jock Gordon would have
beat out the assailant's brains with a ragged stone.
Winsome had not yet awakened enough to ask how all these things
came about. She could only cling to Meg, and listen to Ralph
whispering in her ear.
"I can go home now," she said earnestly.
So Ralph and Meg helped her up, Ralph wrapping her in her great
crimson-barred shawl.
Ralph would have kissed her, but Winsome, standing unsteadily
clasping Meg's arm, said tenderly:
"Not to-night. I am not able to bear it."
It was almost midnight when Ralph and the silent Jock Forrest got
Agnew Greatorix into the spring-cart to be conveyed to Greatorix
Castle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account