The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Colonel, by James Milne

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Title: The Black Colonel

Author: James Milne

Release Date: June 14, 2007 [EBook #21834]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK COLONEL ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE BLACK COLONEL

BY

JAMES MILNE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE ROMANCE OF A PRO-CONSUL
THE EPISTLES OF ATKINS
JOHN JONATHAN AND COMPANY
NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE
MY SUMMER IN LONDON
THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS

"A tale of the times
of old, of the deeds of
the days of other years."
_Ossian_.

JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED

LONDON

MCMXXI.

TO J. T. M., WHO KNOWS THE

STORY OF THE BLACK COLONEL

_Chapters and Contents_

I. WE MEET IN THE PASS
II. TRAPPED BY THE RED-COATS
III. OVER THE HILLS OF HOME
IV. THE OPENING ROAD
V. A CAIRN OF REMEMBRANCE
VI. THE FINGER OF FATE
VII. A PARLEY AND A SURPRISE
VIII. THE CONQUERING HERO
IX. 'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORN
X. THE WAY OF A WOMAN
XI. THE CRACK OF THUNDER
XII. RAIDERS OF THE DARK
XIII. THE WOUND OF ABSENCE
XIV. THE CARDS OF LOVE
XV. NEWS FROM SOMEWHERE
XVI. THE WOOIN' O'T!
XVII. A SONG OF OTHER SHORES
XVIII. MY GARDEN OF CONTENT

_Personal and Particular_

The strangest thing about this tale is that it happened, though not,
may be, as I here relate it; which is merely to seek, in a humble
spirit, the great company of George Washington, who could not tell--a
story!

That of the Black Colonel came to me in scraps of talk from my mother
when, as Byron grandly sang of himself, "I roved, a Young Highlander,
o'er Dark Lochnagar," a wild landscape beloved of Queen Victoria, at
Balmoral, for, you see, the eminences will come in. My mother had it
from her people, a Forbes family long planted in the brave uplands of
Deeside, and I was taken a generation nearer to it in the conversation
of my grandfather, whose folk were on the no less brave uplands of
Donside. Nay, he could remember, what my own father, born like him,
and myself, in the Forbes Country, first st