If the Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford has not forgotten the rock whence he was hewn, this simple story may give him an hour of entertainment. I offer it to you because I think you hav...

The girl came into the room with a darting movement like a swallow, looked round her with the same birdlike quickness, and then ran across the polished floor to where a young man sat on a sofa with on...

Mr. Dickson McCunn completed the polishing of his smooth cheeks with the towel, glanced appreciatively at their reflection in the looking-glass, and then permitted his eyes to stray out of the window....

Dickson McCunn was never to forget the first stage in that pilgrimage. A little after midday he descended from a grimy third-class carriage at a little station whose name I have forgotten. In the vill...

Dickson woke with a vague sense of irritation. As his recollections took form they produced a very unpleasant picture of Mr. John Heritage. The poet had loosened all his placid idols, so that they sho...

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Dickson. “You’re coming home to your supper. It was to be on the chap of nine.” “I’m going back to that place.” The man was clearly demented and must be humoured....

Very early next morning, while Mrs. Morran was still cooking breakfast, Dickson and Heritage might have been observed taking the air in the village street. It was the Poet who had insisted upon this w...

At seven o’clock on the following morning the post-cart, summoned by an early message from Mrs. Morran, appeared outside the cottage. In it sat the ancient postman, whose real home was Auchenlochan, b...

From Kirkmichael on the train stopped at every station, but no passenger seemed to leave or arrive at the little platforms white in the moon. At Dalquharter the case of provisions was safely transferr...

The first cocks had just begun to crow and the clocks had not yet struck five when Dickson presented himself at Mrs. Morran’s back door. That active woman had already been half an hour out of bed, and...

The old keep of Huntingtower stood some three hundred yards from the edge of the cliffs, a gnarled wood of hazels and oaks protecting it from the sea-winds. It was still in fair preservation, having t...

Five scouts’ lanterns burned smokily in the ground room of the keep when Dickson ushered his charges through its cavernous door. The lights flickered in the gusts that swept after them and whistled th...

It is probable that Sir Archibald Roylance did not altogether believe Dickson’s tale; it may be that he considered him an agreeable romancer, or a little mad, or no more than a relief to the tedium of...

Dickson always maintained that his senses did not leave him for more than a second or two, but he admitted that he did not remember very clearly the events of the next few hours. He was conscious of a...

Mr. John Heritage, solitary in the old Tower, found much to occupy his mind. His giddiness was passing, though the dregs of a headache remained, and his spirits rose with his responsibilities. At dayb...

The military historian must often make shift to write of battles with slender data, but he can pad out his deficiencies by learned parallels. If his were the talented pen describing this, the latest a...

We left Mr. McCunn, full of aches but desperately resolute in spirit, hobbling by the Auchenlochan road into the village of Dalquharter. His goal was Mrs. Morran’s henhouse, which was Thomas Yownie’s ...

The three days of storm ended in the night, and with the wild weather there departed from the Cruives something which had weighed on Dickson’s spirits since he first saw the place. Monday⁠—only a week...

The reader is referred to the improved version of Mr. Heritage's sketch reproduced as a frontispiece. ↩...