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The Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott (11); The Monastery
The Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott The Monastery - 11 Author:Sir Walter Scott Volume: 11 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1893 Original Publisher: Estes 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 c... more »an select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IL In von lone vale his early youth was bred, Not solitary then -- the bugle-horn Of fell Alecto often waked its windings, From where the brook joins the majestic river, To the wild northern bog, the curlew's haunt, Where oozes forth its first and feeble streamlet. Old Play. We have said, that most of the feuars dwelt in the village belonging to their townships. This was not, however, universally the case. A lonely tower, to which the reader must now be introduced, was at least one exception to the general rule. It was of small dimensions, yet larger than those which occurred in the village, as intimating that, in case of assault, the proprietor would have to rely upon his own unassisted strength. Two or three miserable huts, at the foot of the fortalice, held the bondsmen and tenants of the feuar. The site was a beautiful green knoll, which started up suddenly in the very throat of a wild and narrow glen, and which, being surrounded, except on one side, by the winding of a small stream, afforded a position of considerable strength. But the great security of Glendearg, for so the place was called, lay in its secluded and almost hidden situation. To reach the tower, it was necessary to travel three miles up the glen, crossing about twenty times the little stream, which, winding through the narrow valley, encountered at everyhundred yards the opposition of a rock or precipitous bank on the one side, which altered its course, and caused it to shoot off in an oblique direction to the other. The hills which ascend on each side of this glen are ver...« less