There’s bad folk everywhere, and what’s far worse, weak ones.
As for hope, I had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as I was able. I tried to pray, I remember, but that same hurry of my mind, like a man running, would not suffer me to think upon the words; and my chief wish was to have the thing begin and be done with it.
Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms,” said the lawyer; and when the woman began to declare it was impossible, “I had better tell you who this person is,” he added. “This is Inspector Newcomen of Scotland Yard.
He came up to me with open arms. “Come to my arms!” he cried, and embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheeks. “David,” said he, “I love you like a brother. And O, man,” he cried in a kind of ecstasy, “am I no a bonny fighter?
She moves in my blood and whispers to me.
It is I, indeed; and if ever true knight gave proof I am that man,’ replied the leader of the second troop; ’for who would not rather face giants, sorcerers, or pagans, than this pinching cold?
Man is not truly one, but truly two.
It’s a pleasant thing to be young and have ten toes, and you may lay to that.
I incline to Cane’s heresy... I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.
Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasure. I was the first that could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.
The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders.
They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument.
And now, at the sight of this clumsy stranger... I had my first attack of tears. I am afraid I led that boy a dog’s life, for as he was new to the work, I had a hundred opportunities of setting him right and putting him down, and I was not slow to profit by them.
My education spoke home to me sharply; I was never brought up on sugar biscuits but on the hard food of the truth. I knew that he was quite unfit to be a husband who was not prepared to be a father also; and for a boy like me to play the father was a mere derision.
But that’s the strange thing about you folk of the college learning: ye’re ignorant, and ye canna see’t. Wae’s me for my Greek and Hebrew; but, man, I ken that I dinna ken them – there’s the differ of it.
For the life of man upon this world of ours is a funny business. They talk of the angels weeping; but I think they must more often be holding their sides as they look on; and there was one thing I determined to do when I began this long story, and that was to tell out everything as it befell.
My lord,” I said, “I am as free of the charge of considering my own interests in this matter as your lordship. As God judges me, I have but the one design, and that is to see justice executed and the innocent go clear. If in pursuit of that I come to fall under your lordship’s displeasure, I must bear it as I may.
I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was to fall.
If I wished,” said he, “you know that you might sleep in gaol?” “My lord,” said I, “I have slept in worse places.
There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman fits in a man’s mind, and stays there, and he could never tell you why; it just seems it was the thing he wanted. She had wonderful bright eyes like stars, and I daresay the eyes had a part in it; but what I remember the most clearly was the way her lips were a trifle open as she turned. And, whatever was the cause, I stood there staring like a fool.