Warlock o' Glenwarlock   By: George MacDonald (1824-1905)

A HOMELY ROMANCE.

BY

GEORGE MACDONALD.

AUTHOR OF "ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD", "A SEA BOARD PARISH", ETC.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER.

1. Castle Warlock 2. The Kitchen 3. The Drawing room 4. An Afternoon Sleep 5. The School 6. Grannie's Cottage 7. Dreams 8. Home 9. The Student 10. Peter Simon 11. The new Schooling 12. Grannie's Ghost Story 13. The Storm Guest 14. The Castle Inn 15. That Night 16. Through the Day 17. That same Night 18. A Winter Idyl 19. An "Interlunar Cave" 20. Catch yer Naig 21. The Watchmaker 22. That Luminous Night 23. At College 24. A Tutorship 25. The Gardener 26. Lost and Found 27. A Transformation 28. The Story of the Knight who spoke the Truth 29. New Experience 30. Charles Jermyn, M. D. 31. Cosmo and the Doctor 32. The Naiad 33. The Garden House 34. Catch your Horse 35. Pull his Tail 36. The thick Darkness 37. The Dawn 38. The Shadow of Death 39. The Labourer 40. The Schoolmaster 41 Grannie and the Stick 42. Obstruction 43. Grizzie's Rights 44. Another Harvest 45. The final Conflict 46. A Rest 47. Help 48. A common Miracle 49. Defiance 50. Discovery and Confession 51. It is Naught saith the Buyer 52. An old Story 53. A small Discovery 54. A greater Discovery 55. A great Discovery 56. Mr. Burns 57. Too Sure comes too late 58. A little Life well rounded 59. A Breaking Up 60. Repose 61. The third Harvest 62. A duet, Trio, and Quartette

CHAPTER I.

CASTLE WARLOCK.

A rough, wild glen it was, to which, far back in times unknown to its annals, the family had given its name, taking in return no small portion of its history, and a good deal of the character of its individuals. It lay in the debatable land between highlands and lowlands; most of its inhabitants spoke both Scotch and Gaelic; and there was often to be found in them a notable mingling of the chief characteristics of the widely differing Celt and Teuton. The country produced more barley than wheat, more oats than barley, more heather than oats, more boulders than trees, and more snow than anything. It was a solitary, thinly peopled region, mostly of bare hills, and partially cultivated glens, each with its small stream, on the banks of which grew here and there a silver birch, a mountain ash, or an alder tree, but with nothing capable of giving much shade or shelter, save cliffy banks and big stones. From many a spot you might look in all directions and not see a sign of human or any other habitation. Even then however, you might, to be sure, most likely smell the perfume to some nostrils it is nothing less than perfume of a peat fire, although you might be long in finding out whence it came; for the houses, if indeed the dwellings could be called houses, were often so hard to be distinguished from the ground on which they were built, that except the smoke of fresh peats were coming pretty freely from the wide mouthed chimney, it required an experienced eye to discover the human nest. The valleys that opened northward produced little; there the snow might some years be seen lying on patches of oats yet green, destined now only for fodder; but where the valley ran east and west, and any tolerable ground looked to the south, there things put on a different aspect. There the graceful oats would wave and rustle in the ripening wind, and in the small gardens would lurk a few cherished strawberries, while potatoes and peas would be tolerably plentiful in their season.