The Master Of Ballantrae A Winters Tale Illustrated Edition PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...sometimes repenting the temerity of my inmixture in affairs so private; and with the first peep of the morning, I was at the sick-room door. Mrs. Henry had thrown open the shutters and even the window, for the temperature was mild. She looked steadfastly before her, where was nothing to see, or only the blue of the morning creeping among woods. Upon the stir of my entrance she did not so much as turn about her face: a circumstance from which I augured very ill. "Madam," I began; and then again, " Madam;" but could make no more of it. Nor yet did Mrs. Henry come to my assistance with a word. In this pass I began gathering up the papers where they lay scattered on the table; and the first thing that struck me, their bulk appeared to have diminished. Once I ran them through, and twice; but the correspondence with the secretary of state, on which I had reckoned so much against the future, was nowhere to be found. I looked in the chimney; amid die smouldering embers black ashes of paper fluttered in the draught; and at that my timidity vanished. "Good God, madam," cried I, in a voice not fitting for a sick-room, " good God, madam, what have you done with my papers?" "I have burned them," said Mrs. Henry, turning about. "It is enough, it is too much, that you and I have seen them." "This is a fine night's work that you have done I" cried I. "And all to save the reputation of a man that eat bread by the shedding of his comrades' blood, as I do by the shedding ink." "To save the reputation of that family in which you are a servant, Mr. Mackellar," she returned, and for which you have already done so much." "It is a family I will not serve much longer," I cried, " for I am driven desperate. You have stricken the sword out of my hands; you have left us all...