CHAPTER I - LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR
THE Lord Justice-Clerk was a stranger in that part of the country; but
his lady wife was known there from a child, as her race had been before
her. The old "riding Rutherfords of Hermiston," of whom she was the
last descendant, had been famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill
subjects, and ill husbands to their wives though not their properties.
Tales of them were rife for twenty miles about; and their name was even
printed in the page of our Scots histories, not always to their credit.
One bit the dust at Flodden; one was hanged at his peel door by James
the Fifth; another fell dead in a carouse with Tom Dalyell; while a
fourth (and that was Jean's own father) died presiding at a Hell-Fire
Club, of which he was the founder. There were many heads shaken in
Crossmichael at that judgment; the more so as the man had a villainous
reputation among high and low, and both with the godly and the worldly.
At that very hour of his demise, he had ten going pleas before the
Session, eight of them oppressive.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25