Violet Jacob > Flemington

FLEMINGTON
CHAPTER I
PROLOGUE
Mr. Duthie walked up the hill with the gurgle
of the burn he had just crossed purring in his
ears. The road was narrow and muddy, and the
house of Ardguys, for which he was making,
stood a little way in front of him, looking across
the dip threaded by the water. The tall white
walls, discoloured by damp and crowned by their
steep roof, glimmered through the ash-trees on
the bank at his right hand. There was something
distasteful to the reverend man’s decent mind in
this homely approach to the mansion inhabited
by the lady he was on his way to visit, and he
found the remoteness of this byway among the
grazing lands of Angus oppressive.
The Kilpie burn, travelling to the river Isla,
farther west, had pushed its way through the
undulations of pasture that gave this particular
tract, lying north of the Sidlaws, a definite
character; and the formation of the land seemed
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