Kidnapped quotes

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;

He fetched another cup from the shelf; and then, to my great surprise, instead of drawing more beer, he poured an accurate half from one cup to the other.

There was a kind of nobleness in this that took my breath away; if my uncle was certainly a miser, he was one of that thorough breed that goes near to make the vice respectable.

When we had made an end of our meal, my uncle Ebenezer unlocked a drawer, and drew out of it a clay pipe and a lump of tobacco, from which he cut one fill before he locked it up again.

“Is this my house or yours?” said he, in his keen voice, and then all of a sudden broke off. “Na, na,” said he, “I didnae mean that. What’s mine is yours, Davie, my man, and what’s yours is mine.

Blood’s thicker than water; and there’s naebody but you and me that ought the name.

” And then on he rambled about the family, and its ancient greatness, and his father that began to enlarge the house, and himself that stopped the building as a sinful waste; and this put it in my head to give him Jennet Clouston’s message.

And with that he went away, as he had been impatient to do from the beginning.

Of course, I had guessed it a long while ago; but it is one thing to guess, another to know;

and I sat stunned with my good fortune, and could scarce grow to believe that the same poor lad who had trudged in the dust from Ettrick Forest not two days ago, was now one of the rich of the earth, and had a house …

I wondered if it was possible that Ransome’s stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ill with the man’s looks.

But indeed, he was neither so good as I supposed him, nor quite so bad as Ransome did; for, in fact, he was two men, and left the better one behind as soon as he set foot on board his vessel.

The next thing, I heard my uncle calling me, and found the pair in the road together. It was the captain who addressed me, and that with an air (very flattering to a young lad) of grave equality.

Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts.

No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule.

Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.

“Not so, David,” says he.

“Ye see, I have but one face; but so long as that door is open and my face to it, the best part of my enemies will be in front of me, where I would aye wish to find them.”

Then he gave me from the rack a cutlass (of which there were a few besides the firearms), choosing it with great care, shaking his head and saying he had never in all his life seen poorer weapons;

“To be sure!” cried I. “I must hear the bursting of the glass!”

“Ye have some rudiments of sense,” said Alan, grimly.

A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses and one had been let fall; and after that, silence again.

I do not know if I was what you call afraid; but my heart beat like a bird’s, both quick and little; and there was a dimness came before my eyes which I continually rubbed away, and which continually returned.

As for hope, I had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as I was able.

and that’s what does it. Now, if ye were one of the cursed race of Campbell, ye would gnash your teeth to hear tell of it. If ye were the Red Fox …” And at that name, his teeth shut together, and he ceased speaking.

I have seen many a grim face, but never a grimmer than Alan’s when he had named the Red Fox.

“And who is the Red Fox?” I asked, daunted, but still curious.

And then the heather’s a great help. And everywhere there are friends’ houses and friends’ byres and haystacks. And besides, when folk talk of a country covered with troops, it’s but a kind of a byword at the best.

A soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles.

I have fished a water with a sentry on the other side of the brae, and killed a fine trout; and I have sat in a heather bush within six feet of another, and learned a real bonny tune from his whistling.

Neither he nor Mr. Riach had shown well in the fighting; but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the more because I found Alan very white.

“Ochone, David,” says he, “this is no the kind of death I fancy!”

“What, Alan!” I cried, “you’re not afraid?”

“What, Alan!” I cried, “you’re not afraid?”

“No,” said he, wetting his lips, “but you’ll allow, yourself, it’s a cold ending.”

By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round Iona and begun to come alongside Mull.

As soon, however, as the sun came out, I lay down on the top of that rock to dry myself.

The comfort of the sunshine is a thing I cannot tell.

It set me thinking hopefully of my deliverance, of which I had begun to despair; and I scanned the sea and the Ross with a fresh interest.

And even as it was, I had paid for it pretty dear, not only in past sufferings, but in my present case; being clothed like a beggar-man, scarce able to walk, and in great pain of my sore throat.

I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

though I am free to own I was no sooner out of view of the house than I very jealously washed this gift of his in a wayside fountain.

Thought I to myself: “If these are the wild Highlanders, I could wish my own folk wilder.”

I not only started late, but I must have wandered nearly half the time. True, I met plenty of people, grubbing in little miserable fields that would not keep a cat, or herding little kine about the bigness of asses.

Campbell, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards God. I was inclined to smile at him since the business of the snuff; but he had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes.

There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but Mr. Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue.

And though I was a good deal puffed up with my adventures and with having come off, as the saying is, with flying colours;

At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror.

Indeed, it is one thing to stand the danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and character.

The thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, that I was all amazed and helpless.

“Can you swear that you don’t know him, Alan?” I cried, half angered, half in a mind to laugh at his evasions.

“Not yet,” says he; “but I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David.”

“And yet there was one thing I saw clearly,” said I; “and that was, that you exposed yourself and me to draw the soldiers.”

Mr. Henderland’s words came back to me: that we ourselves might take a lesson by these wild Highlanders. Well, here I had taken mine.

Alan’s morals were all tail-first; but he was ready to give his life for them, such as they were.

“Alan,” said I, “I’ll not say it’s the good Christianity as I understand it, but it’s good enough. And here I offer ye my hand for the second time.”

At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he added at once, “Hoots! small blame to ye!

To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.

And then there was water there, and water’s a thing that dauntons even me. No, no,” said Alan, “it’s no you that’s to blame, it’s me.”

“And what are we to do till night?” I asked.

“Lie here,” says he, “and birstle.”

That one good Scotch word, “birstle,” was indeed the most of the story of the day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle;

“Alan,” I said, “it’s not the want of will: it’s the strength that I want. If I could, I would; but as sure as I’m alive I cannot.”

“Very well, then,” said Alan. “I’ll carry ye.”

I looked to see if he were jesting; but no, the little man was in dead earnest; and the sight of so much resolution shamed me.

… the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust like a worm.

By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly.

I had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and I scarce remembered there was such a lad as David Balfour.

I did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure would be my last, with despair—and of Alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred.

Alan was in the right trade as a soldier; this is the officer’s part to make men continue to do things, they know not wherefore, and when, if the choice was offered, they would lie down where they were and be killed.

And I dare say I would have made a good enough private; for in these last hours it never occurred to me that I had any choice but just to obey as long as I was able, and die obeying.

“It’s here,” said one of the guides, and we struck up hill.

The trees clung upon the slope, like sailors on the shrouds of a ship, and their trunks were like the rounds of a ladder, by which we mounted.

Quite at the top, and just before the rocky face of the cliff sprang above the foliage, we found that strange house which was known in the country as “Cluny’s Cage.”

A tree, which grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. The walls were of wattle and covered with moss.

The whole house had something of an egg shape; and it half hung, half stood in that steep, hillside thicket, like a wasp’s nest in a green hawthorn.

Within, it was large enough to shelter five or six persons with some comfort. A projection of the cliff had been cunningly employed to be the fireplace;

“And so you see, sir,” said I, “there is something to be said upon my side; and this gambling is a very poor employ for gentlefolks. But I am still waiting your opinion.”

I am sure if ever Cluny hated any man it was David Balfour.

He looked me all over with a warlike eye, and I saw the challenge at his lips. But either my youth disarmed him, or perhaps his own sense of justice. Certainly it was a mortifying matter for all concerned, and not least Cluny;

“I will only say this to ye, David,” said Alan, very quietly, “that

I have long been owing ye my life, and now I owe ye money. Ye should try to make that burden light for me.

”

At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself.

I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it?

I minded me of all Alan’s kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost forever that doughty friend.

“Alan,” cried I, “what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?”

“ ’Deed, and I don’t know,” said Alan. “For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:⁠—and now I like ye better!”

and Lowland boys of eighteen were not so rife in these parts of the world, and above all about that time, that they could fail to put one thing with another, and connect me with the bill. So it was, at least.

Other folk keep a secret among two or three near friends, and somehow it leaks out; but among these clansmen, it is told to a whole countryside, and they will keep it for a century.

There was but one thing happened worth narrating; and that is the visit I had of Robin Oig, one of the sons of the notorious Rob Roy.

“Robin Oig,” he said, when it was done, “ye are a great piper. I am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye.

Body of me! ye have mair music in your sporran than I have in my head!

And though it still sticks in my mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, I warn ye beforehand—it’ll no be fair!

“I do that,” said I.

“David,” says he, “ye’re a man of small invention and less faith. But let me set my wits upon the hone, and if I cannae beg, borrow, nor yet steal a boat, I’ll make one!”

“I think I see ye!” said I. “And what’s more than all that: if ye pass a bridge, it can tell no tales;

The one man took the lady, the other the estate.

Now, Mr. David, they talk a great deal of charity and generosity; but in this disputable state of life, I often think the happiest consequences seem to flow when a gentleman consults his lawyer, and takes all the law allows him.

Anyhow, this piece of Quixotry on your father’s part, as it was unjust in itself, has brought forth a monstrous family of injustices. Your father and mother lived and died poor folk; you were poorly reared;

“And, now,” says he, “mind I have my blunderbush, and if ye take a step nearer ye’re as good as deid.”

“And a very civil speech,” says Alan, “to be sure.”

“Na,” says my uncle, “but this is no a very chanty kind of a proceeding, and I’m bound to be prepared. And now that we understand each other, ye’ll can name your business.”