Patsy
They stood high on the Abbey cliff-edge—an old man, eagle-profiled, hawk-beaked, cockatoo-crested, with angry grey eyebrows running peakily upwards towards his temples at either side ... and a boy.
They were the Earl Raincy and his grandson Louis—all the world knew them in that country of the Southern Albanach. For Leo Raincy was a great man, and the lad the heir of all he possessed.
For all—or almost all—they looked upon belonged to the Earl of Raincy. Even those blue hills bounding the meadow valleys to the north hid a fair half of his property, and he was sorry for that. Because he was a land miser, hoarding parishes and townships. He grudged the sea its fringe of foam, the three-mile fishing limit, the very high-and-low mark between the tides which was not his, but belonged to the crown—along which the common people had a right to pass, and where fisherfolk from the neighbouring villages might fish and dry their nets, when all ought to have been his.
The earl's dark eyes passed with carelessness over hundreds of farm-towns, snug sheltered villages, mills with little threads of white wimpling away from the unheard constant clack of the wheel, barns, byres and stackyards—all were his, but of these he took no heed.
Behind them Castle Raincy itself stood up finely from the plain of corn-land and green park, an artificial lake in front, deep trees all about, patterned gardens, the fiery flash of hot-house glass where the sun struck, and pinnacles high in air, above all the tall tower from which Margaret de Raincy had defied the English invader during the minority of James the Fifth. The earl's eyes passed all these over. He did not see them as aught to take pride in.
What he lingered upon was the wide pleasant valley beneath him, with a burn running and lurking among twinkling birches, interspersed with alders, many finely drained fields with the cows feeding belly-deep with twitching tails, and the sweep of the ripening crops which ran off to either side over knolls carefully planed down—and so back and back to the shelter of dark fir woods. Twelve hundred acres—and not his! Not a Raincy stone upon it, nor had been for four hundred years.
S. R. Crockett
PATSY
AUTHOR OF "THE RAIDERS," "THE STICKIT MINISTER," "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM," "ANNE OF THE BARRICADES," ETC.
"Yes, I," said Patsy.
HEIRESS AND HEIR
THE MAIDENS' COVE
THE BOTHY
PATSY'S CONFESSIONS
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE LADS IN THE HEATHER
THE BLACK PEARL OF CAIRN FERRIS
HIS LIFE IN HIS HAND
THE WICKED LAYETH A SNARE
THE TRAMPLING OF HORSE IN THE NIGHT
PATSY'S RESCUE
PLOTS AND PRINCES
THE END OF AN OLD FEUD
THE FECHTIN' FOOL
A RIDER COMES TO CASTLE RAINCY
PATSY HELD IN HONOUR
UNCLE JULIAN'S PRINCESS
MISS ALINE TAKES COMMAND
LOUIS RAINCY ENDURES HARDNESS
THE CAVE OF ADULLAM
WINTER AFTERNOON
PATSY HAS GREATNESS THRUST UPON HER
THE LOST FOLK'S ACRE
THE HIGH STILE
THE GIBBET RING
THE DUKES ... AND SUPSORROW
THE "GREEN DRAGON"
ENEMY'S COUNTRY
A CREDIT TO THE "GREEN DRAGON"
THE NIGHT LANDING
ORDEAL BY FIRE
PATSY RAISES THE COUNTRY
THE PRISON-BREAKERS
THE PICT'S WAY IS THE WOMAN'S WAY
STIFF-NECKED AND REBELLIOUS
A PICTISH HONEYMOON
THE LAND OF ALWAYS AFTERNOON
REBEL GALLOWAY
"WHY DO THEY LOVE YOU?"
THE BATTLE OF THE CAUSEWAY