Patsy — A Reader’s Guide

CHAPTER I. HEIRESS AND HEIR

CHAPTER II. THE MAIDENS' COVE

CHAPTER III. THE BOTHY

CHAPTER IV. BY FORCE OF ARMS

CHAPTER V. PATSY'S CONFESSIONS

CHAPTER VI. HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

CHAPTER VII. THE LADS IN THE HEATHER

CHAPTER VIII. THE BLACK PEARL OF CAIRN FERRIS

CHAPTER IX. HIS LIFE IN HIS HAND

CHAPTER X. THE WICKED LAYETH A SNARE

CHAPTER XI. THE TRAMPLING OF HORSE IN THE NIGHT

CHAPTER XII. PATSY'S RESCUE

CHAPTER XIII. PLOTS AND PRINCES

CHAPTER XIV. THE END OF AN OLD FEUD

CHAPTER XV. THE FECHTIN' FOOL

CHAPTER XVI. A RIDER COMES TO CASTLE RAINCY

CHAPTER XVII. PATSY HELD IN HONOUR

CHAPTER XVIII. UNCLE JULIAN'S PRINCESS

CHAPTER XIX. MISS ALINE TAKES COMMAND

CHAPTER XX. LOUIS RAINCY ENDURES HARDNESS

CHAPTER XXI. THE CAVE OF ADULLAM

CHAPTER XXII. WINTER AFTERNOON

CHAPTER XXIII. PATSY HAS GREATNESS THRUST UPON HER

CHAPTER XXIV. THE LOST FOLK'S ACRE

CHAPTER XXV. THE HIGH STILE

CHAPTER XXVI. THE GIBBET RING

CHAPTER XXVII. THE DUKES ... AND SUPSORROW

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE "GREEN DRAGON"

CHAPTER XXIX. ENEMY'S COUNTRY

CHAPTER XXX. A CREDIT TO THE "GREEN DRAGON"

CHAPTER XXXI. THE NIGHT LANDING

CHAPTER XXXII. ORDEAL BY FIRE

CHAPTER XXXIII. PATSY RAISES THE COUNTRY

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE PRISON-BREAKERS

CHAPTER XXXV. THE PICTS' WAY IS THE WOMAN'S WAY

CHAPTER XXXVI. STIFF-NECKED AND REBELLIOUS

CHAPTER XXXVII. A PICTISH HONEYMOON

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE LAND OF ALWAYS AFTERNOON

CHAPTER XXXIX. REBEL GALLOWAY

CHAPTER XL. "WHY DO THEY LOVE YOU?"

CHAPTER XLI. THE BATTLE OF THE CAUSEWAY

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.

There were two houses on this twelve hundred acres of good land. First came Cairn Ferris, at the head of the glen of the Abbey Water. Close to the road that, under the lee of the big pines, a plain, douce, much-ivied house; and down in a nook by the sea, Abbey Burnfoot, called "The Abbey," a newer and brighter place, set like a jewel on the very edge of the sea, the white sand in front and the blue sweep of the bay widening out on either hand. Horrible--oh, most horrible! Not his--nor ever would be!

This was the blot which blackened all the rest--the property of the Ferrises of Cairn Ferris, of Adam, chief of the name at the top of the Glen, and of his brother Julian--he who had cursed the noble scythe-sweep of the Abbey Bay, which all ought to have been untouched Raincy property, with crow-stepped gables and beflowered verandahs.