Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) THE STORY OF VALENTINE AND HIS BROTHER BY MRS OLIPHANT AUTHOR OF ‘CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,’ ETC. STEREOTYPE EDITION WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXVI _ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE_ TO MY ETON BOYS C. F. O. F. R. O. F. W. THE STORY OF VALENTINE; AND HIS BROTHER. CHAPTER I. Two ladies were seated in a great dim room, partially illuminated by fits and starts with gleams of firelight. The large windows showed a pale dark sky, in which twilight was giving place to night, and across which the brown branches of the trees, rough with the buds of March, tossed wildly in a hurricane of wind, burdened with intermittent blasts of rain--rain that dashed fiercely against the windows a handful at a time, then ceased till some new cloud was ready to discharge its angry shower. Something fiercely personal and furious was in the storm. It looked and felt like something not addressed to the world in general, but aimed individually by some angry spirit of the elements at the people who lived here high up above the brawling Esk amid the brown wintry woods at Rosscraig House.