Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson (the gingerbread man read aloud TXT) 📗

Kidnapped

By Robert Louis Stevenson.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Dedication Kidnapped I: I Set Off Upon My Journey to the House of Shaws II: I Come to My Journey’s End III: I Make Acquaintance of My Uncle IV: I Run a Great Danger in the House of Shaws V: I Go to the Queen’s Ferry VI: What Befell at the Queen’s Ferry VII: I Go to Sea in the Brig “Covenant” of Dysart VIII: The Roundhouse IX: The Man with the Belt of Gold X: The Siege of the Roundhouse XI: The Captain Knuckles Under XII: I Hear of the “Red Fox” XIII: The Loss of the Brig XIV: The Islet XV: The Lad with the Silver Button: Through the Isle of Mull XVI: The Lad with the Silver Button: Across Morven XVII: The Death of the Red Fox XVIII: I Talk with Alan in the Wood of Lettermore XIX: The House of Fear XX: The Flight in the Heather: The Rocks XXI: The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of Corrynakiegh XXII: The Flight in the Heather: The Moor XXIII: Cluny’s Cage XXIV: The Flight in the Heather: The Quarrel XXV: In Balquhidder XXVI: End of the Flight: We Pass the Forth XXVII: I Come to Mr. Rankeillor XXVIII: I Go in Quest of My Inheritance XXIX: I Come Into My Kingdom XXX: Goodbye Afterword Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Dedication

My Dear Charles Baxter:

If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questions than I should care to answer: as for instance how the Appin murder has come to fall in the year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so near to Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touches David Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability to crack. But if you tried me on the point of Alan’s guilt or innocence, I think I could defend the reading of the text. To this day you will find the tradition of Appin clear in Alan’s favour. If you inquire, you may even hear that the descendants of “the other man” who fired the shot are in the country to this day. But that other man’s name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it. I might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar’s library, but a book for the winter evening schoolroom when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman’s attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.

As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to like this tale. But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to find his father’s name on the flyleaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets⁠—who may tomorrow open the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and inglorious Macbean⁠—or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the L.J.R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places that have now become for your companion a part of the scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of present business, the past must echo in your memory! Let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend,

R. L. S. Skerryvore, Bournemouth.

Kidnapped Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 I I Set Off Upon My Journey to the House of Shaws

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father’s house. The sun began to