Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 10
General
Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 10
Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- Fiction
The three months had not quite expired, when the anxiously-looked-for
invitation arrived, and George Rogers was to dine at the house of his
uncle's friend, the father of the fair Isabel. I shall not describe his
feelings as he hastened along the streets towards Pimlico. He arrived at
the house, and his hand shook as he reached it to the rapper. The door
was opened by a strange-looking footman. George thought that he had seen
him before--it was indeed a face that, if once seen, was not easily
forgotten. The footman had not such large whiskers as Bill Somers, but
they were of the same colour, and they certainly were the same eyes that
had frightened his mother in the head of her first-foot. He was shown
into a room where Isabel and her father waited to receive him. "When I
last saw you, sir," said the latter, "you informed me you were the
nephew of John Rogers. He finds he has no cause to be ashamed of you.
George, my dear fellow, your uncle Jack gives you his hand! Isabel,
welcome your cousin!"
"My cousin!" cried George.
"My cousin!" said Isabel.
What need we say more--before the New Year came, they went down to
Scotland a wedded pair, to be his mother's first-foot in the farmhouse,
which had been rebuilt.
THE ROMANCE OF THE SIEGE OF PERTH.
In the year 1310, King Robert Bruce had overcome many of those
extraordinary difficulties that threatened to render all the efforts of
mere man unavailable in regaining for Scotland that perfect liberty of
which she had so long boasted, and which, though it had never been taken
from her absolutely, had been, by the unwarrantable schemes and policy
of the first Edward, loosened from her grasp, and lay trampled on by the
fierce genius of war. Great and wonderful, however, as had already been
the prowess and determination of Bruce, and successful beyond the
aspirations of hope as had been his efforts in the glorious cause of his
country's freedom, there was great room for question whether Scotland
would even at this period have triumphed, had the sceptre of England not
fallen so opportunely into the hands of the second Edward. The first and
greatest of all Scotland's foes, the first Edward, had died three years
before, at Burgh-upon-Sands, leaving, as Froissart informs us, his dying
injunction on his son, to boil his body in a caldron, till the bones
should part with the flesh, and to carry the grim relics with him into
Scotland, with the condition that they should not be buried till
Scotland was subdued. The legacy of dry bones, from which the spirit of
the great king had departed, was apparently all of his father that the
young Edward inherited; for he soon displayed so much vacillation of
policy, and so little genius for war, that, if Providence had intended
to work to the hands of Bruce for the salvation of his country, she
could not have brought about her designs with greater effect than by
giving Bruce as an enemy the young King of England. Things were going
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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