Kidnapped. Robert Louis Stevenson

self respect, to carry it through; and little as I liked the sound of what I heard, and slow as I began to travel, 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, in the bottom of the next valley, pointed to a great hulk of building standing very bare upon a green. 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! If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his—house, byre and stable, man, guest and master, wife, miss or bairn—black, black be their fall!”

      “‘That is the house of Shaws!’ she cried.” Young Folks Paper, May 1,1886.

      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 these days, folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose, 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; being all set with hawthorn bushes full of flowers; the fields dotted with sheep; a fine flight of rooks in the sky; and every sign of a kind soil and climate. And yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy.

      Country folk went by from the fields as I sat there on the side of the ditch, but I lacked the spirit to give them a good-e’en. At last the sun went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, I saw a scroll of smoke go mounting; not much thicker, as it seemed to me, than the smoke of a candle; but still 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 wonderfully, more, I feel sure, than a whole flask of the lily of the valley water, that Mrs Campbell set so great a store by.

      So I set forward by a little, faint track in the grass that led in my direction. It was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place of habitation; yet I saw no other, Presently it brought me to stone uprights, with an unroofed lodge beside them, and coats of arms upon the top. A brave entrance, it was plainly meant to be; but never finished; instead of gates of wrought iron, a pair of hurdles were tied across with a straw rope; and as there were no park walls, nor any sign of avenue, the track that I was following passed on the right hand of the pillars and went wandering on toward the house.

      The nearer I got to that, 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; and many of the windows were unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dovecote.

      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.

      Was this the palace I had been coming to? was it within these walls that I was to seek new friends and begin great fortunes? Why, in my father’s house on Essen-waterside, the fire and the bright lights would show a mile away; and the door open to a beggar’s knock.

      I came forward cautiously, and giving ear as I came, heard some one 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.

      The door, as well as I could see it in the dim light, was a great piece of wood all studded with nails; and 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. I knocked again; and hearkened again. By this time my ears were grown so accustomed to the quiet, that I could hear the ticking of the clock inside, as it slowly counted out the seconds; but 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 carreer, when I heard the cough right overhead, and, jumping back and looking up, beheld a man’s head in a tall night-cap and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss at one of the first story windows.

      “It’s loaded,” said a voice.

      “I have come here with a letter,” I said, “to Mr Ebenezer Balfour of the Shaws. Is he here?”

      “From whom is it?” asked the man with the blunderbuss.

      “That is neither here nor there,” said I, for I was growing very wroth.

      “Well,” was the reply, “ye can put it down upon the doorstep and be off with you.”

      “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.”

      “A what?” cried the voice sharply.

      I repeated what I had said.

      “Who are ye, yourself?” was the next question, 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 windowsill; 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 you in!” and he disappeared from the window.