The Captain of the Guard Author:James Grant General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1904 Original Publisher: G. Richards Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can sel... more »ect from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: The third hore the name of his countess, Margaret Douglas, so famed for her beauty as the Fair Maid of Galloway, qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440, in her eighteenth year. The fourth bore the name of his sister, Lady Murielle Douglas, two years younger, with the same fatal inscription, qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440. Beyond these four coffins, in the gloom of that vaulted closet, were a grindstone, an axe, and a block. We have opened our story on the evening of the Twenty-second November ; thus we shall soon see with what intent these terrible objects were provided, CHAPTER II WILLIAM, DUKE OF TOUHAINE Vails not to tell each hardy clan, From the fair middle marches come ; The Bloody Heart blazed in the van, Announcing Douglas, dreaded name !' Scott. At this time the house of Douglas, one which in past ages had ever led the van of battle in the cause of Scottish honour and liberty, had attained the most exorbitant, and in that warlike and feudal epoch, dangerous power -- a power that never ceased to menace the freedom of the people on one hand, and the independence of the throne on the other. William, sixth earl of Douglas, and third duke of Touraine, had just succeeded to the vast possessions of his family by the death of his father, Archibald, who had been Lieutenant-General of Scotland, and Marshal of France, and who died at Restalrig, in 1439. In his seventeenth year, William found himself master of all the princely heritage his warlike sire had left him, the earldom of Douglas, with the lordships of Bothwell, Annandale, and Liddesdale ; the countyof Longoville, and...« less