The Entail; or, The Lairds of Grippy

by John Galt

‘I have seen him,’ she added; ‘and my time cannot now be long.’

At that instant her eye lighted on the stranger as he moved into another position. She looked at him for some time with startled amazement and awe; and, turning round to one of the young ladies, said, with an accent of indescribable grief, ‘I have been mistaken.’ She then rose, and the stranger introduced himself. He was the same person in whom, on his arrival from France, she had fourteen years before discovered the son of her early lover. Seeing him on the spot where she had parted from his father, and dressed in the garb and tartan of the clan which her lover wore on that occasion, she had, in her visionary mood, believed he was an apparition.

Saving these occasional hallucinations, her health certainly received new energy from her native air; and, by her presence at the castle, she was of essential service to the recruiting of her young friend.

In the meantime, Glengael being informed of the attachment between Walkinshaw and Ellen, had espoused his interests with great ardour; and French Frazer, as the stranger was called, also raising men for promotion, the castle became a scene of so much bustle as materially to disturb the shattered nerves of the invalid. With a view, therefore, to change the scene, and to enable Mrs. Eadie to enjoy the benefit of sea-bathing, an excursion was proposed to Caithness and Sutherland, where Glengael was desirous of introducing the officers to certain political connexions which he had in these counties, and it was proposed that, while the gentlemen went to pay their visits, the ladies should take up their residence at the little town of Wick.

The weather had, for some days before their departure from Glengael, been bright and calm, and the journey to Wick was performed with comparative ease and comfort. The party had, however, scarcely alighted at the house, which a servant sent on before had provided for their accommodation, when the wind changed, and the skies were overcast. For three days it raged a continual tempest; the rain fell in torrents, and the gentlemen, instead of being able to proceed on their visit, were confined to the house. At the end of the third day the storm subsided, and, though the weather was broken, there were intervals which allowed them to make little excursions in the neighbourhood.

The objects they visited, and the tales and traditions of the country, were alike new and interesting to the whole party; and it was agreed, that, before leaving Wick, the gentlemen should conduct the ladies to some of the remarkable spots which they had themselves visited;—among other places, Girnigo Castle, the ancient princely abode of the Earls of Caithness, the superb remains of which still obtain additional veneration in the opinion of the people, from the many guilty and gloomy traditions that fear and fancy have exaggerated in preserving the imperfect recollections of its early history.

Mrs. Eadie had agreed to accompany them, the walk not exceeding three or four miles; but on the evening preceding the day which they had fixed for the excursion, when the weather had all the appearance of being settled, she saw, or imagined that she saw, at sunset, some awful prodigy which admonished her not to go.

‘I beheld,’ said she, ‘between me and the setting sun, a shadowy hand bearing an hour-glass, run out; and when I looked again, I saw the visionary semblance of Walkinshaw’s uncle pass me with a pale countenance. Twice have I witnessed the same apparition of his wraith, and I know from the sign, that either his time is not to be long, or to-morrow we shall hear strange tidings.’

It was useless to reason or to argue with her sublime and incomprehensible pretensions; but as it was deemed not prudent to leave her alone, Glengael and Mrs. Frazer agreed to remain at Wick, while French Frazer and the young ladies, with Walkinshaw and his sister, went to inspect the ruins of Girnigo, and the rocks, caverns, and precipices of Noss-head.

Of all places in the wild and withered region of Caithness, the promontory of Noss-head presents, alike to the marine voyager and the traveller by land, one of the most tremendous objects. The waves of the universal sea have, from the earliest epochs, raged against it. Huge rocks, torn from the cliffs, stand half hid in the waters, like the teeth and racks of destruction grinning for shipwrecks. No calm of the ocean is there without a swell, and no swell without horror. The sea-birds, that love to build on the wildest cliffs and precipices of that coast of ruins, shun Noss-head, for the ocean laves against it in everlasting cataracts, and the tides, whether in ebb or flow, hurl past in devouring whirlpools. To the pilots afar at sea it is a lofty landmark and a beacon,—but the vessel embayed either within its northern or its southern cliffs, may be known by the marks on her sails, or the name on the pieces of her stern,—but none of her crew ever escape to tell the circumstances of her fate. Even there the miserable native earns no spoils from the waves;—whatever reaches the shore consists of fragments, or splinters, or corses, or limbs,—all are but the crumbs and the surfeit-relics of destruction.