Fiction > Book editions > London, 1886 - Kidnapped

262                                   KIDNAPPED.
As soon as the shearers quit their work and the
dusk began to fall, we waded ashore and struck for the
Bridge of Stirling, keeping to the fields and under the
field fences.
The bridge is close under the castle hill, an old, high,
narrow bridge with pinnacles along the parapet; and
you may conceive with how much interest I looked upon
it, not only as a place famous in history, but as the very
doors of salvation to Alan and myself. The moon was
not yet up when we came there; a few lights shone
along the front of the fortress, and lower down a few
lighted windows in the town; but it was all mighty
still, and there seemed to be no guard upon the passage.
I was for pushing straight across; but Alan was
more wary.
"It looks unco' quiet," said he; "but for all that
we'll lie down here cannily behind a dyke, and make
sure."
So we lay for about a quarter of an hour, whiles
whispering, whiles lying still and hearing nothing
earthly but the washing of the water on the piers. At
last there came by an old, hobbling woman with a crutch
stick; who first stopped a little, close to where we lay,
and bemoaned herself and the long way she had travelled;
and then set forth again up the steep spring of the
bridge. The woman was so little, and the night still
so dark, that we soon lost sight of her; only heard the
sound of her steps, and her stick, and a cough that she
had by fits, draw slowly farther away.