LITMIR.BIZ

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of the place to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was something strange about the Shaws itself.

      I changed the form of my inquiries; and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the house of Shaws.

      ‘What’ll like be your business, mannie[7]?’

      ‘I was led to think that I would get a situation,’ I said, looking as modest as I could.

      ‘What?’ cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse started; and then, ‘Well, mannie,’ he added, ‘it’s nane of my affairs; but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye’ll take a word from me, ye’ll keep clear of the Shaws.’

      The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man was Mr. Balfour of the Shaws.

      ‘Hoot, hoot, hoot,’ said the barber, ‘nae kind of a man, nae kind of a man at all’;

      I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. What kind of a great house was this or what sort of a gentleman? If an hour’s walking would have brought me back to Essendean, had left my adventure then and there, and returned to Mr. Campbell’s. But when I had come so far already, mere shame would not suffer me to desist till I had put the matter to the touch of proof; and little as I liked the sound of what I heard, I still kept asking my way and still kept advancing.

      It was drawing on to sundown when I met a stout, dark, sour-looking woman coming trudging down a hill; and she, when I had put my usual question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. The country was pleasant round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. My heart sank.

      ‘That!’ I cried.

      The woman’s face lit up with a malignant anger. ‘That is the house of Shaws!’ she cried. ‘Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it; blood shall bring it down. See here!’ she cried again – ‘I spit upon the ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall!’

      And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one took the pith out of my legs.

      I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws. The more I looked, the pleasanter that countryside appeared; and yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy.

      At last the sun went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, I saw a scroll of smoke go mounting; there it was, and meant a fire, and warmth, and cookery, and some living inhabitant that must have lit it; and this comforted my heart. So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my direction.

      The nearer I got to the house, the drearier it appeared. It seemed like the one wing of a house that had never been finished. What should have been the inner end stood open on the upper floors, and showed against the sky with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry. Many of the windows were unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote.

      The night had begun to fall as I got close; and in three of the lower windows, which were very high up and narrow, and well-barred, the changing light of a little fire began to glimmer. I came forward cautiously, and giving ear as I came, heard someone rattling with dishes, and a little dry, eager cough that came in fits; but there was no sound of speech, and not a dog barked.

      I lifted my hand with a faint heart under my jacket, and knocked once. Then I stood and waited. The house had fallen into a dead silence; a whole minute passed away, and nothing stirred but the bats overhead. Whoever was in that house kept deadly still, and must have held his breath.

      I was in two minds whether to run away; but anger got the upper hand, and I began instead to rain kicks and buffets on the door, and to shout out aloud for Mr. Balfour. I was in full career, when I heard the cough right overhead, and jumping back and looking up, beheld a man’s head in a tall nightcap, and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss, at one of the first-storey windows.

      ‘It’s loaded,’ said a voice.

      ‘I have come here with a letter,’ I said, ‘to Mr. Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws. Is he here?’

      ‘Well,’ was the reply, ‘ye can put it down upon the doorstep, and be off with ye.’

      ‘I will do no such thing,’ I cried. ‘I will deliver it into Mr. Balfour’s hands, as it was meant I should. It is a letter of introduction.’

      ‘Who are ye, yourself?’ he asked, after a considerable pause.

      ‘I am not ashamed of my name,’ said I. ‘They call me David Balfour.’

      At that, I made sure the man started, for I heard the blunderbuss rattle on the window-sill; and it was after quite a long pause, and with a curious change of voice, that the next question followed: ‘Is your father dead?’

      I was so much surprised at this, that I could find no voice to answer, but stood staring.

      ‘Ay,’ the man resumed, ‘he’ll be dead, no doubt; and that’ll be what brings ye chapping to my door.’ Another pause, and then defiantly, ‘Well, man,’ he said, ‘I’ll let ye in;’ and he disappeared from the window.

      Chapter III

      I Make Acquaintance of My Uncle

      Presently there came a great rattling of chains and bolts, and the door was cautiously opened and shut to again behind me as soon as I had passed.

      ‘Go into the kitchen and touch naething[8],’ said the voice; and while the person of the house set himself to replacing the defences of the door, I groped my way forward and entered the kitchen.

      As soon as the last chain was up, the man rejoined me. He was a mean, stooping, narrow-shouldered, clay-faced creature; and his age might have been anything between fifty and seventy. His nightcap was of flannel, and so was the nightgown that he wore, instead of coat and waistcoat, over his ragged shirt. He was long unshaved; but what most distressed and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor look me fairly in the face. What he was, whether by trade or birth, was more than I could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big house upon board wages.

      ‘Are ye sharp-set?’ he asked, glancing at about the level of my knee. ‘Ye can eat that drop parritch[9]?’

      I said I feared it was his own supper.

      ‘O,’ said he, ‘I can do fine wanting it. I’ll take the ale, though, for it slockens my cough.’ He drank the cup about half out, still keeping an eye upon me as he drank; and then suddenly held out his hand. ‘Let’s see the letter,’ said he.

      I told him the letter was for Mr. Balfour; not for him. ‘And who do ye think I am?’ says he. ‘Give me Alexander’s letter.’

      ‘You know my father’s name?’

      ‘It would be strange if I didnae,’ he returned, ‘for he was my born brother; and little as ye seem to like either me or my house, or my good parritch, I’m your born uncle, Davie, my man, and you my born nephew. So give us the letter, and sit down and fill your kyte.’

      I sat down to the porridge with as little appetite for meat as ever a young man had. Meanwhile, my uncle, stooping over the fire, turned the letter over and over in his hands.

      ‘Do ye ken what’s in it?’ he asked, suddenly.

      ‘You

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