Tales of My Landlord The Black Dwarf Author:Sir Walter Scott General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1816 Original Publisher: Printed for William Blackwood, Prince's Street; and John Murray, Albemarle Street, London. Subjects: Jacobites Covenanters Bothwell Bridge, Battle of, Scotland, 1679 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrati... more »ons 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 select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: TALE I. THE BLACK DWARF. CHAPTER I. Preliminary. Hast any philosophy in thee, Shepherd? As You Like it. It was a fine April morning (excepting that it had snowed hard the night before, and the ground remained covered with a dazzling mantle of six inches in depth) when two horsemen rode up to the Wallace Inn. The first was a strong, tall, powerful man, in a grey riding-coat, ha- VOL I. B ving a hat covered with wax-cloth, a huge silver-mounted horsewhip, boots, and dreadnought overalls. He was mounted on a large strong brown mare, rough in coat, but well in condition, with a saddle of the yeomanry cut, and a double-bitted military bridle, somewhat rusted. The man who accompanied him was apparently his servant ; he rode a shaggy little grey poney, had a blue bonnet on his head, and a large check napkin folded about his neck, wore a pair of long blue hose instead of boots, had his gloveless hands much stained with tar, and observed an air of deference and respect towards his companion, but without any of those indications of precedence and punctilio which are preserved between the gentry and their domestics. On the contrary, the two travellers entered the court-yard abreast, and the concluding sentence of the conversation which had been carrying on betwixt them was a joint ejaculation, "Lord guide us, an' this weather lastrwhat will come o' the lambs 1" The hint was sufficient to my Landlord, who, advancing to t...« less