The Waverley NovelsCambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012 - 216 pagina's Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Here's a good world! Knew you of this fair wort? King John. Julia Mannering to Matilda Marchmont, I Must take up the thread of my story, my dearest Matilda, where I broke off yesterday. For two or three days we talked of nothing but our siege and its probable consequences, and dinned into my father's unwilling ears a proposal to go to Edinburgh, or at least to Dumfries, where there is remarkably good society, until the resentment of these outlaws should blow over. He answered with great composure, that he had nq mind to have his landlord's house and his own property at Wood- bourne destroyed; that, with our good leave, he had usually been esteemed competent to taking measures for the safety or protection of his family; that if he remained quiet at home, he conceived the welcome the villains had received was not of a nature to invite a second visit, but should he show any signs of alarm, it would be the sure way to incur the very risk which we were afraid of. Heartened by his arguments, and by the extreme indifference with which he treated the supposed danger, ve began to grow a little bolder, and to walk about as usual. Only the gentlemen were sometimes invited to take their guns when they attended us, and I observed that my father for several nights paid particular attention to having the house properly secured, and required his domestics to keep their arms in readiness in case of necessity., But three days ago chanced an occurrence, of a nature which alarmed me more by far than the attack of the smugglers. I told you there was a small lake at some distance from Woodbourne, where the gentlemen sometimes go to shoot wild-fowl. I happened at breakfast to say I should like to see this place in its present frozen state, occupied by skaters ... |