Tales of a Pilgrim, by the Author of 'a Summer Ramble in the North Highlands'. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1827 Excerpt: ... THE FORTUNES OF MIKE MACKILLOP. Fal. Why, Sir, did I say you were an honest man? Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so. Kino Henry IV. Mike Mackillop, ere he had reached his fifteenth year, was deservedly reputed the most thorough-going young reprobate residing within the liberties of the ancient and flourishing borough of Kippercross. It is a rare thing, indeed, to find the inhabitants of a small retired town one and all concurring on any given subject; and the natives of Kippercross were not a whit more remarkable for unanimity of opinion than those of any other antiquated seat of civic dignity within the good realm of Scotland: --but so far as regarded Mike Mackillop, there was not an individual, from the bailie to the beggar, who dissented from the ungenerous prediction that he was born to be hanged. An old bed-ridden grandmother, dearly though she loved him, when she heard him daily denounced as the fomentor and abettor of every act of mischief that disturbed the equanimity of the honest burghers, knew not how to refute the presage, and ultimately chimed in with the popular opinion. Even Mike himself, from hearing the aphorism continually sported by his townsmen, began to regard it as veracious, and to calculate, to a certainty, on one day dying in his shoes. Mike's father had left no inheritance to his son, save that worst of all inheritances, a bad name. Nearly related to a family of consideration in the neighbourhood, the deceased had received a gentleman's education, and started in life with fair prospects; but low and grovelling habits, nurtured by a constant association with disreputable and mean-born companions, eventually wrought his ruin. In the course of his regular visits to a low ale-house i..