The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 20
Stevenson, Robert Louis
French -- England -- Fiction; Prisoners of war -- Fiction
I pass over the next fifty or sixty leagues of our journey without
comment. The reader must be growing weary of scenes of travel; and for
my own part I have no cause to recall these particular miles with any
pleasure. We were mainly occupied with attempts to obliterate our trail,
which (as the result showed) were far from successful; for, on my cousin
following, he was able to run me home with the least possible loss of
time, following the claret-coloured chaise to Kirkby-Lonsdale, where I
think the landlord must have wept to learn what he had missed, and
tracing us thereafter to the doors of the coach-office in Edinburgh
without a single check. Fortune did not favour me, and why should I
recapitulate the details of futile precautions which deceived nobody and
wearisome arts which proved to be artless?
The day was drawing to an end when Mr. Rowley and I bowled into
Edinburgh to the stirring sound of the guard's bugle and the clattering
team. I was here upon my field of battle; on the scene of my former
captivity, escape, and exploits; and in the same city with my love. My
heart expanded; I have rarely felt more of a hero. All down the Bridges
I sat by the driver with my arms folded and my face set, unflinchingly
meeting every eye, and prepared every moment for a cry of recognition.
Hundreds of the population were in the habit of visiting the Castle,
where it was my practice (before the days of Flora) to make myself
conspicuous among the prisoners; and I think it an extraordinary thing
that I should have encountered so few to recognise me. But doubtless a
clean chin is a disguise in itself; and the change is great from a suit
of sulphur-yellow to fine linen, a well-fitting mouse-coloured greatcoat
furred in black, a pair of tight trousers of fashionable cut, and a hat
of inimitable curl. After all, it was more likely that I should have
recognised our visitors, than that they should have identified the
modish gentleman with the miserable prisoner in the Castle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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