Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Abbot by Walter Scott (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📖
- Author: Walter Scott
Book online «The Abbot by Walter Scott (the little red hen ebook .txt) 📖». Author Walter Scott
“I would that a man would bring such a charge,” said the page; “he should see, ere his life was a minute older, whether he had cause to term me coward or no.”
“Beware of such big words,” answered the maiden; “you said but anon that I sometimes wear hose and doublet.”
“But remain still Catharine Seyton, wear what you list,” said the page, endeavouring again to possess himself of her hand.
“You indeed are pleased to call me so,” replied the maiden, evading his intention, “but I have many other names besides.”
“And will you not reply to that,” said the page, “by which you are distinguished beyond every other maiden in Scotland?”
The damsel, unallured by his praises, still kept aloof, and sung with gaiety a verse from an old ballad,
“Oh, some do call me Jack, sweet love, And some do call me Gill; But when I ride to Holyrood, My name is Wilful Will.”“Wilful Will” exclaimed the page, impatiently; “say rather Will o' the Wisp—Jack with the Lantern—for never was such a deceitful or wandering meteor!”
“If I be such,” replied the maiden, “I ask no fools to follow me—If they do so, it is at their own pleasure, and must be on their own proper peril.”
“Nay, but, dearest Catherine,” said Roland Graeme, “be for one instant serious.”
“If you will call me your dearest Catherine, when I have given you so many names to choose upon,” replied the damsel, “I would ask you how, supposing me for two or three hours of my life escaped from yonder tower, you have the cruelty to ask me to be serious during the only merry moments I have seen perhaps for months?”
“Ay, but, fair Catherine, there are moments of deep and true feeling, which are worth ten thousand years of the liveliest mirth; and such was that of yesterday, when you so nearly—”
“So nearly what?” demanded the damsel, hastily.
“When you approached your lips so near to the sign you had traced on my forehead.”
“Mother of Heaven!” exclaimed she, in a yet fiercer tone, and with a more masculine manner than she had yet exhibited,-“Catherine Seyton approach her lips to a man's brow, and thou that man!—vassal, thou liest!”
The page stood astonished; but, conceiving he had alarmed the damsel's delicacy by alluding to the enthusiasm of a moment, and the manner in which she had expressed it, he endeavoured to falter forth an apology. His excuses, though he was unable to give them any regular shape, were accepted by his companion, who had indeed suppressed her indignation after its first explosion—“Speak no more on't,” she said. “And now let us part; our conversation may attract more notice than is convenient for either of us.”
“Nay, but allow me at least to follow you to some sequestered place.”
“You dare not,” replied the maiden.
“How,” said the youth, “dare not? where is it you dare go, where I dare not follow?”
“You fear a Will o' the Wisp,” said the damsel; “how would you face a fiery dragon, with an enchantress mounted on its back?”
“Like Sir Eger, Sir Grime, or Sir Greysteil,” said the page; “but be there such toys to be seen here?”
“I go to Mother Nicneven's,” answered the maid; “and she is witch enough to rein the horned devil, with a red silk thread for a bridle, and a rowan-tree switch for a whip.”
“I will follow you,” said the page.
“Let it be at some distance,” said the maiden.
And wrapping her mantle round her with more success than on her former attempt, she mingled with the throng, and walked towards the village, heedfully followed by Roland Graeme at some distance, and under every precaution which he could use to prevent his purpose from being observed.
Chapter the Twenty-Eighth. Yes, it is he whose eyes look'd on thy childhood, And watch'd with trembling hope thy dawn of youth, That now, with these same eyeballs dimm'd with age, And dimmer yet with tears, sees thy dishonour. OLD PLAY.
At the entrance of the principal, or indeed, so to speak, the only street in Kinross, the damsel, whose steps were pursued by Roland Graeme, cast a glance behind her, as if to be certain he had not lost trace of her and then plunged down a very narrow lane which ran betwixt two rows of poor and ruinous cottages. She paused for a second at the door of one of those miserable tenements, again cast her eye up the lane towards Roland, then lifted the latch, opened the door, and disappeared from his view.
With whatever haste the page followed her example, the difficulty which he found in discovering the trick of the latch, which did not work quite in the usual manner, and in pushing open the door, which did not yield to his first effort, delayed for a minute or two his entrance into the cottage. A dark and smoky passage led, as usual, betwixt the exterior wall of the house, and the hallan, or clay wall, which served as a partition betwixt it and the interior. At the end of this passage, and through the partition, was a door leading into the ben, or inner chamber of the cottage, and when Roland Graeme's hand was upon the latch of this door, a female voice pronounced, “Benedictus qui veniat in nomine Domini, damnandus qui in nomine inimici.” On entering the apartment, he perceived the figure which the chamberlain had pointed out to him as Mother Nicneven, seated beside the lowly hearth. But there was no other person in the room. Roland Graeme gazed around in surprise at the disappearance of Catherine Seyton, without paying much regard to the supposed sorceress, until she attracted and riveted his regard by the tone in which she asked him—“What seekest thou here?”
“I seek,” said the page, with much embarrassment; “I seek—”
But his answer was cut short, when the old woman, drawing her huge gray eyebrows sternly together, with a frown which knitted her brow into a thousand wrinkles, arose,
Comments (0)