Immanuel Kant - "The Critique of Practical Reason"

James Sheridan Knowles - "The Love Chase"

Inez Haynes Irwin - "The Native Son"

C.F. McGlashan - "History of the Donner Party"

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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Lilac Sunbonnet

S >> S.R. Crockett >> The Lilac Sunbonnet




"Perhaps you can tell me--" faltered Ralph. "I thought--"

"Na, na, I can tell ye naething; ye maun juist find oot for
yersel', as a young man should. Only this I wull say, it's only a
cauldrife Whigamore that wad tak' 'No' for an answer. Mind ye that
gin the forbears o' the daddy o' ye was on the wrang side o'
Bothwell Brig that day--an' guid Westland bluid they spilt, nae
doot, Whigs though they waur--there's that in ye that rode doon
the West Port wi' Clavers, an' cried:

'Up wi' the bonnets o' bonny Dundee!'"

"I know," said Ralph with some of the stiff sententiousness which
he had not yet got rid of, "that I am not worthy of your
granddaughter in any respect--"

"My certes, no," said the sharp-witted dame, "for ye're a man, an'
it's a guid blessin' that you men dinna get your deserts, or it
wad be a puir lookoot for the next generation, young man. Gae wa'
wi' ye, man; mind ye, I'll no' say a word in yer favour, but
raither the ither way--whilk," smiled Mistress Skirving in the
deep still way that she sometimes had in the midst of her
liveliness, "whilk will maybe do ye mair guid. But I'm speakin'
for my guid-man when I say that ye hae oor best guid-wull. We
think that ye are a true man, as yer faither was, though sorely he
was used by this hoose. It wad maybes be some amends," she added,
as if to herself.

Then the dear old lady touched her eyes with a fine handkerchief
which she took out of a little black reticule basket on the table
by her side.

As Ralph rose reverently and kissed her hand before retiring,
Walter Skirving motioned him near his chair. Then he drew him
downward till Ralph was bending on one knee. He laid a nerveless
heavy hand on the young man's head, and looked for a minute--which
seemed years to Ralph--very fixedly on his eyes. Then dropping his
hand and turning to the window, he drew a long, heavy breath.

Ralph Peden rose and went out.





CHAPTER XXIV.

LEGITIMATE SPORT.


As Ralph Peden went through the flower-decked parlour in which he
had met Jess Kissock an hour before, he heard the clang of
controversy, or perhaps it is more correct to say, he heard the
voice of Meg Kissock raised to its extreme pitch of command.

"Certes, my lass, but ye'll no hoodwink me; ye hae dune no yae
thing this hale mornin' but wander athort [about] the hoose wi'
that basket o' flooers. Come you an' gie us a hand wi' the kirn
this meenit! Ye dinna gang a step oot o' the hoose the day!"

Ralph did not think of it particularly at the time, but it was
probably owing to this utilitarian occupation that he did not
again see the attractive Jess on his way out. For, with all her
cleverness, Jess was afraid of Meg.

Ralph passed through the yard to the gate which led to the hill.
He was wonderfully comforted in heart, and though Winsome had been
alternatively cold and kind, he was too new in the ways of girls
to be uplifted on that account, as a more experienced man might
have been. Still, the interview with the old people had done him
good.

As he was crossing the brook which flows partly over and partly
under the road at the horse watering-place, he looked down into
the dell among the tangles of birch and the thick viscous foliage
of the green-berried elder. There he caught the flash of a light
dress, and as he climbed the opposite grassy bank on his way to
the village, he saw immediately beneath him the maiden of his
dreams and his love-verses. Now she leaped merrily from stone to
stone; now she bent stealthily over till her palms came together
in the water; now she paused to dash her hair back from her
flushed face. And all the time the water glimmered and sparkled
about her feet. With her was Andra Kissock, a bare-legged,
bonnetless squire of dames. Sometimes he pursued the wily burn
trout with relentless ferocity and the silent intentness of a
sleuthhound. Often, however, he would pause and with his finger
indicate some favourite stone to Winsome. Then the young lady,
utterly forgetful of all else and with tremulous eagerness,
delicately circumvented the red-spotted beauties.

Once throwing her head back to clear the tumbling avalanches of
her hair, she chanced to see Ralph standing silent above. For a
moment Winsome was annoyed. She had gone to the hill brook with
Andra so that she might not need to speak further with Ralph
Peden, and here he had followed her. But it did not need a second
look to show her that he was infinitely more embarrassed than she.
This is the thing of all others which is fitted to make a woman
calm and collected. It allows her to take the measure of her
opportunity and assures her of her superiority. So, with a gay and
quipsome wave of the hand, in which Ralph was conscious of some
faint resemblance to her grandmother, she called to him:

"Come down and help us to catch some trout for supper."

Ralph descended, digging his heels determinedly into the steep
bank, till he found himself in the bed of the streamlet. Then he
looked at Winsome for an explanation. This was something he had
not practised in the water of Leith. Andra Kissock glared at him
with a terrible countenance, in which contempt was supposed to
blend with a sullen ferocity characteristic of the noble savage.
The effect was slightly marred by a black streak of mud which was
drawn from the angle of his mouth to the roots of his hair. Ralph
thought from his expression that trout-fishing of this kind did
not agree with him, and proposed to help Winsome instead of Andra.

This proposal had the effect of drawing a melodramatic "Ha! ha!"
from that youth, ludicrously out of keeping with his usual
demeanour. Once he had seen a play-acting show unbeknown to his
mother, when Jess had taken him to Cairn Edward September fair.

So "Ha! ha!" he said with the look of smothered desperation which
to the unprejudiced observer suggested a pain in his inside. "You
guddle troot!" he cried scornfully, "I wad admire to see ye! Ye
wad only fyle [dirty] yer shune an' yer braw breeks!"

Ralph glanced at the striped underskirt over which Winsome had
looped her dress. It struck him with astonishment to note how she
had managed to keep it clean and dry, when Andra was apparently
wet to the neck.

"I do not know that I shall be of any use," he said meekly, "but I
shall try."

Winsome was standing poised on a stone, bending like a lithe maid,
her hands in the clear water. There had been a swift and noiseless
rush underneath the stone; a few grains of sand rose up where the
white under part of the trout had touched it as it glided beneath.
Slowly and imperceptibly Winsome's hand worked its way beneath the
stone. With the fingers of one hand she made that slight swirl of
the water which is supposed by expert "guddlers" to fascinate the
trout, and to render them incapable of resisting the beckoning
fingers. Andra watched breathlessly from the bank above. Ralph
came nearer to see the issue. The long, slender fingers, shining
mellow in the peaty water, were just closing, when the stone on
which Ralph was standing precariously toppled a little and fell
over into the burn with a splash. The trout darted out and in a
moment was down stream into the biggest pool for miles.

Winsome rose with a flush of disappointment, and looked very
reproachfully towards the culprit. Ralph, who had followed the
stone, stood up to his knees in the water, looking the picture of
crestfallen humility.

Overhead on the bank Andra danced madly like an imp. He would not
have dared to speak to Ralph on any other occasion, but guddling,
like curling, loosens the tongue. He who fails or causes the
failures of others is certain to hear very plainly of it from
those who accompany him to this very dramatic kind of fishing.

"0' a' the stupid asses!" cried that young man. "Was there ever
sic a beauty?--a pund wecht gin it was an ounce!--an' to fa' aff
a stane like a six-months' wean!"

His effective condemnation made Winsome laugh. Ralph laughed along
with her, which very much increased the anger of Andra, who turned
away in silent indignation. It was hard to think, just when he had
got the "prairie flower" of Craig Ronald (for whom he cherished a
romantic attachment of the most desperate and picturesque kind)
away from the house for a whole long afternoon at the fishing,
that this great grown-up lout should come this way and spoil all
his sport. Andra was moved to the extremity of scorn.

"Hey, mon!" he called to Ralph, who was standing in the water's
edge with Winsome on a miniature bay of shining sand, looking down
on the limpid lapse of the clear moss-tinted water slipping over
its sand and pebbles--"hey, mon!" he cried.

"Well, Andra, what is it?" asked Winsome Charteris, looking up
after a moment. She had been busy thinking.

"Tell that chap frae Enbro'," said Andra, collecting all his
spleen into one tremendous and annihilating phrase--"him that
tummilt aff the stane--that there's a feck o' paddocks [a good
many frogs] up there i' the bog. He micht come up here an' guddle
for paddocks. It wad be safer for the like o' him!" The ironical
method is the favourite mode or vehicle of humour among the common
orders in Galloway. Andra was a master in it.

"Andra," said Winsome warmly, "you must not--"

"Please let him say whatever he likes. My awkwardness deserves it
all," said Ralph, with becoming meekness.

"I think you had better go home now," said Winsome; "it will soon
be time for you to bring the kye home."

"Hae ye aneuch troots for the mistress's denner?" said Andra, who
knew very well how many there were.

"There are the four that you got, and the one I got beneath the
bank, Andra," answered Winsome.

"Nane o' them half the size o' the yin that he fleyed [frightened]
frae ablow the big stane," said Andra Kissock, indicating the
culprit once more with the stubby great toe of his left foot. It
would have done Ralph too much honour to have pointed with his
hand. Besides, it was a way that Andrew had at all times. He
indicated persons and things with that part of him which was most
convenient at the time. He would point with his elbow stuck
sideways at an acute angle in a manner that was distinctly
libellous. He would do it menacingly with his head, and the
indication contemptuous of his left knee was a triumph. But the
finest and most conclusive use of all was his great toe as an
index-finger of scorn. It stuck out apart from all the others, red
and uncompromising, a conclusive affidavit of evil conduct.

"It's near kye-time," again said Winsome, while Ralph yearned with
a great yearning for the boy to betake himself over the moor. But
Andra had no such intention.

"I'se no gaun a fit till I hae showed ye baith what it is to
guddle. For ye mauna gang awa' to Embro" [elbow contemptuous to
the north, where Andra supposed Edinburgh to lie immediately on
the other side of the double-breasted swell of blue Cairnsmuir of
Carsphairn], "an' think that howkin' (wi' a lassie to help ye) in
among the gravel is guddlin'. You see here!" cried Andra, and
before either Winsome or Ralph could say a word, he had stripped
himself to his very brief breeches and ragged shirt, and was
wading into the deepest part of the pool beneath the water-fall.

Here he scurried and scuttled for all the world like a dipper,
with his breast showing white like that of the bird, as he walked
along the bottom of the pool. Most of the time his head was
beneath the water, as well as all the rest of his body. His arms
bored their way round the intricacies of the boulders at the
bottom. His brown and freckled hands pursued the trouts beneath
the banks. Sometimes he would have one in each hand at the same
time.

When he caught them he had a careless and reckless way of throwing
them up on the bank without looking where he was throwing. The
first one he threw in this way took effect on the cheek of Ralph
Peden, to his exceeding astonishment.

Winsome again cried "Andra!" warningly, but Andra was far too busy
to listen; besides, it is not easy to hear with one's head under
water and the frightened trout flashing in lightning wimples
athwart the pool.

But for all that, the fisherman's senses were acute, even under
the water; for as Winsome and Ralph were not very energetic in
catching the lively speckled beauties which found themselves so
unexpectedly frisking upon the green grass, one or two of them
(putting apparently their tails into their mouths, and letting go,
as with the release of a steel spring) turned a splashing
somersault into the pool. Andra did not seem to notice them as
they fell, but in a little while he looked up with a trout in his
hand, the peat-water running in bucketfuls from his hair and
shirt, his face full of indignation.

"Ye're lettin' them back again!" he exclaimed, looking fiercely at
the trout in his hand. "This is the second time I hae catched this
yin wi' the wart on its tail!" he said. "D'ye think I'm catchin'
them for fun, or to gie them a change o' air for their healths,
like fine fowk that come frae Embro'!"

"Andra, I will not allow--" Winsome began, who felt that on the
ground of Craig Ronald a guest of her grandmother's should be
respected.

But before she had got further Andra was again under the water,
and again the trout began to rain out, taking occasional local
effect upon both of them.

Finally Andra looked up with an air of triumph. "It tak's ye a'
yer time to grup them on the dry land, I'm thinkin'," said he with
some fine scorn; "ye had better try the paddocks. It's safer." So,
shaking himself like a water-dog, he climbed up on the grass,
where he collected the fish into a large fishing basket which
Winsome had brought. He looked them over and said, as he handled
one of them:

"Oh, ye're there, are ye? I kenned I wad get ye some day,
impidence. Ye hae nae business i' this pool ony way. Ye belang
half a mile faurer up, my lad; ye'll bite aff nae mair o' my
heuks. There maun be three o' them i' his guts the noo--"

Here Winsome looked a meaning look at him, upon which Andra said:

"I'm juist gaun. Ye needna tell me that it's kye-time. See you an'
be hame to tak' in yer grannie's tea. Ye're mair likely to be
ahint yer time than me!"

Haying sped this Parthian shaft, Andra betook himself over the
moor with his backful of spoil.





CHAPTER XXV.

BARRIERS BREAKING.


"Andra is completely spoiled," exclaimed Winsome; "he is a clever
boy, and I fear we have given him too much of his own will. Only
Jess can manage him."

Winsome felt the reference to be somewhat unfortunate. It was, of
course, no matter to her whether a servant lass put a flower in
Ralph Peden's coat; though, even as she said it, she owned to
herself that Jess was different from other servant maids, both by
nature and that quickness of tongue which she had learned when
abroad.

Still, the piquant resentment Winsome felt, gave just that touch,
of waywardness and caprice which was needed to make her altogether
charming to Ralph, whose acquaintance with women had been chiefly
with those of his father's flock, who buzzed about him everywhere
in a ferment of admiration.

"Your feet are wet," said Winsome, with charming anxiety.

Andra was assuredly now far over the moor. They had rounded the
jutting point of rock which shut in the linn, and were now walking
slowly along the burnside, with the misty sunlight shining upon
them, with a glistering and suffused green of fresh leaf sap in
its glow. So down that glen many lovers had walked before.

Ralph's heart beat at the tone of Winsome's inquiry. He hastened
to assure her that, as a matter of personal liking, he rather
preferred to go with his feet wet in the summer season.

"Do you know," said Winsome, confidingly, "that if I dared I would
run barefoot over the grass even yet. I remember to this day the
happiness of taking off my stockings when I came home from the
Keswick school, and racing over the fresh grass to feel the
daisies underfoot. I could do it yet."

"Well, let us," said Ralph Peden, the student in divinity,
daringly.

Winsome did not even glance up. Of course, she could not have
heard, or she would have been angry at the preposterous
suggestion. She thought awhile, and then said:

"I think that, more than anything in the world, I love to sit by a
waterside and make stories and sing songs to the rustle of the
leaves as the wind sifts among them, and dream dreams all by
myself."

Her eyes became very thoughtful. She seemed to be on the eve of
dreaming a dream now.

Ralph felt he must go away. He was trespassing on the pleasaunce
of an angel.

"What do you like most? What would you like best to do in all the
world?" she asked him.

"To sit with you by the waterside and watch you dream," said
Ralph, whose education was proceeding by leaps and bounds.

Winsome risked a glance at him, though well aware that it was
dangerous.

"You are easily satisfied," she said; "then let us do it now."

So Ralph and Winsome sat down like boy and girl on the fallen
trunk of a fir-tree, which lay across the water, and swung their
feet to the rhythm of the wimpling burn beneath.

"I think you had better sit at the far side of that branch," said
Winsome, suspiciously, as Ralph, compelled by the exigencies of
the position, settled himself precariously near to her section of
the tree-trunk.

"What is the matter with this?" asked Ralph, with an innocent
look. Now no one counterfeits innocence worse than a really
innocent man who attempts to be more innocent than he is.

So Winsome looked at him with reproach in her eyes, and slowly she
shook her head. "It might do very well for Jess Kissock, but for
me it will balance better if you sit on the other side of the
branch. We can talk just as well."

Ralph had thought no more of Jess Kissock and her flower from the
moment he had seen Winsome. Indeed, the posy had dropped
unregarded from his button-hole while he was gathering up the
trout. There it had lain till Winsome, who had seen it fall,
accidentally set her foot on it and stamped it into the grass.
This indicates, like a hand on a dial, the stage of her
prepossession. A day before she had nothing regarded a flower
given to Ralph Peden; and in a little while, when the long curve
has at last been turned, she will not regard it, though a hundred
women give flowers to the beloved.

"I told you I should come," said Ralph, beginning the personal
tale which always waits at the door, whatever lovers may say when
they first meet. Winsome was meditating a conversation about the
scenery of the dell. She needed also some botanical information
which should aid her in the selection of plants for a herbarium.
But on this occasion Ralph was too quick for her. "I told you I
should come," said Ralph boldly, "and so you see I am here," he
concluded, rather lamely.

"To see my grandmother," said Winsome, with a touch of archness in
her tone or in her look--Ralph could not tell which, though he
eyed her closely. He wished for the first time that the dark-brown
eyelashes which fringed her lids were not so long. He fancied
that, if he could only have seen the look in the eyes hidden
underneath, he might have risked changing to the other side of the
unkindly frontier of fir-bough which marked him off from the land
of promise on the farther side.

But he could not see, and in a moment the chances were past.

"Not only to see your grandmother, who has been very kind to me,
but also to see you, who have not been at all kind to me,"
answered Ralph.

"And pray, Master Ralph Peden, how have I not been kind to you?"
said Winsome with dignity, giving him the full benefit of a pair
of apparently reproachful eyes across the fir-branch.

Now Ralph had strange impulses, and, like Winsome, certainly did
not talk by rule.

"I do wish," he said complainingly, with his head a little to one
side, "that you would only look at me with one eye at a time. Two
like that are too much for a man."

This is that same Ralph Peden whose opinions on woman were written
in a lost note-book which at this present moment is--we shall not
say where.





CHAPTER XXVI.

SUCH SWEET PERIL.


Winsome looked away down the glen, and strove to harden her face
into a superhuman indignation.

"That he should dare--the idea!"

But it so happened that the idea so touched that rare gift of
humour, and the picture of herself looking at Ralph Peden solemnly
with one eye at a time, in order at once to spare his
susceptibilities and give the other a rest, was too much for her.
She laughed a peal of rippling merriment that sent all the
blackbirds indignant out of their copses at the infringement of
their prerogative.

Ralph's humour was slower and a little grimmer than Winsome's,
whose sunny nature had blossomed out amid the merry life of the
woods and streams. But there was a sternness in both of them as
well, that was of the heather and the moss hags. And that would in
due time come out. It is now their day of love and bounding life.
And there are few people in this world who would not be glad to
sit just so at the opening of the flower of love. Indeed, it was
hardly necessary to tell one another.

Laughter, say the French (who think that their l'amour is love,
and so will never know anything), kills love. But not the kind of
laughter that rang in the open dell which peeped like the end of a
great green-lined prospect glass upon the glimmering levels of
Loch Grannoch; nor yet the kind of love which in alternate
currents pulsed to and fro between the two young people who sat so
demurely on either side of the great, many-spiked fir-branch.

"Is not this nice?" said Winsome, shrugging her shoulders
contentedly and swinging her feet.

Their laughter made them better friends than before. The
responsive gladness in each other's eyes seemed part of the
midsummer stillness of the afternoon. Above, a red squirrel
dropped the husks of larch tassels upon them, and peered down upon
them with his bright eyes. He was thinking himself of household
duties, and had his own sweetheart safe at home, nestling in the
bowl of a great beech deep in the bowering wood by the loch.

"I liked to hear you speak of your father to-day," said Winsome,
still swinging her feet girlishly. "It must be a great delight to
have a father to go to. I never remember father or mother."

Her eyes were looking straight before her now, and a depth of
tender wistfulness in them went to Ralph's heart. He was beginning
to hate the branch.

"My father," he said, "is often stern to others, but he has never
been stern to me--always helpful, full of tenderness and kindness.
Perhaps that is because I lost my mother almost before I can
remember."

Winsome's wet eyes, with the lashes curving long over the under
side of the dark-blue iris, were turned full on him now with the
tenderness of a kindred pity.

"Do you know I think that your father was once kind to my mother.
Grandmother began once to tell me, and then all at once would tell
me no more--I think because grandfather was there."

"I did not know that my father ever knew your mother," answered
Ralph.

"Of course, he would never tell you if he did," said the woman of
experience, sagely; "but grandmother has a portrait in an oval
miniature of your father as a young man, and my mother's name is
on the back of it."

"Her maiden name?" queried Ralph.

Winsome Charteris nodded. Then she said wistfully: "I wish I knew
all about it. I think it is very hard that grandmother will not
tell me!"

Then, after a silence which a far-off cuckoo filled in with that
voice of his which grows slower and fainter as the midsummer heats
come on, Winsome said abruptly, "Is your father ever hard and--
unkind?"

Ralph started to his feet as if hastily to defend his father.
There was something in Winsome's eyes that made him sit down
again--something shining and tender and kind.

"My father," he said, "is very silent and reserved, as I fear I
too have been till I came down here" (he meant to say, "Till I met
you, dear," but he could not manage it), "but he is never hard or
unkind, except perhaps on matters connected with the Marrow kirk
and its order and discipline. Then he becomes like a stone, and
has no pity for himself or any. I remember him once forbidding me
to come into the study, and compelling me to keep my own garret-
room for a month, for saying that I did not see much difference
between the Marrow kirk and the other kirks. But I am sure he
could never be unkind or hurtful to any one in the world. But why
do you ask, Mistress Winsome?"

"Because--because--" she paused, looking down now, the underwells
of her sweet eyes brimming to the overflow--"because something
grandfather said once, when he was very ill, made me wonder if
your father had ever been unkind to my mother."

Two great tears overflowed from under the dark lashes and ran down
Winsome's cheek. Ralph was on the right side of the branch now,
and, strangely enough, Winsome did not seem to notice it. He had a
lace-edged handkerchief in his hand which had been his mother's,
and all that was loving and chivalrous in his soul was stirred at
the sight of a woman's tears. He had never seen them before, and
there is nothing so thrilling in the world to a young man. Gently,
with a light, firm hand, he touched Winsome's cheek, instinctively
murmuring tenderness which no one had ever used to him since that
day long ago, when his mother had hung, with the love of a woman
who knows that she must give up all, over the cot of a boy whose
future she could not foresee.