Huntingtower

Huntingtower  (1922)  by John Buchan

Prologue→

To W. P. Ker.

If the Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford has not forgotten the rock whence he was hewn, this simple story may give an hour of entertainment. I offer it to you because I think you have met my friend Dickson McCunn, and I dare to hope that you may even in your many sojournings in the Westlands have encountered one or other of the Gorbals Die-Hards. If you share my kindly feeling for Dickson, you will be interested in some facts which I have lately ascertained about his ancestry. In his veins there flows a portion of the redoubtable blood of the Nicol Jarvies. When the Bailie, you remember, returned from his journey to Rob Roy beyond the Highland Line, he espoused his housekeeper Mattie, "an honest man's daughter and a near cousin o' the Laird o' Limmerfield." The union was blessed with a son, who succeeded to the Bailie's business and in due course begat daughters, one of whom married a certain Ebenezer McCunn, of whom there is record in the archives of the Hammermen of Glasgow. Ebenezer's grandson, Peter by name, was Provost of Kirkintilloch, and his second son was the father of my hero by his marriage with Robina Dickson, oldest daughter of one Robert Dickson, a tenant-farmer in the Lennox. So there are coloured threads in Mr. McCunn's pedigree, and, like the Bailie, he can count kin, should he wish, with Rob Roy himself through "the auld wife ayont the fire at Stuckavrallachan."

Such as it is, I dedicate to you the story, and ask for no better verdict on it than that of that profound critic of life and literature, Mr. Huckleberry Finn, who observed of the Pilgrim's Progress that he "considered the statements interesting, but tough."

J.B.

Contents

• Prologue
• Chapter I: How a Retired Provision Merchant Felt the Impulse of Spring
• Chapter II: Of Mr. John Heritage and the Difference in Points of View
• Chapter III: How Childe Roland and Another Came to the Dark Tower
• Chapter IV: Dougal
• Chapter V: Of the Princess in the Tower
• Chapter VI: How Mr. McCunn Departed with Relief and Returned with Resolution
• Chapter VII: Sundry Doings in the Mirk
• Chapter VIII: How a Middle-Aged Crusader Accepted a Challenge
• Chapter IX: The First Battle of the Cruives
• Chapter X: Deals with an Escape and a Journey
• Chapter XI: Gravity out of Bed
• Chapter XII: How Mr. McCunn Committed an Assault upon an Ally
• Chapter XIII: The Coming of the Danish Brig
• Chapter XIV: The Second Battle of the Cruives
• Chapter XV: The Gorbals Die-Hards Go into Action
• Chapter XVI: In Which a Princess Leaves a Dark Tower and a Provision Merchant Returns to His Family

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923. The author died in 1940, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.