The Second Macabre Megapack by Edith Nesbit

Author:Edith Nesbit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gothic, macabre, ghost stories, horror, short stories
ISBN: 9781434446695
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

THE UNCANNY BAIRN, by Mrs. Alfred (Louisa) Baldwin

A Story of the Second Sight

David Galbraith owned a compact estate in East Lothian which he farmed at a considerable profit. The land had passed from father to son for a couple of hundred years. It had always yielded a good livelihood to the owner, but never had it been so highly cultivated or produced such abundant crops as under David Galbraith’s liberal and skilful management. The oats and potatoes grown on his farm commanded the highest prices in the market, and his root crops were superior to any in the district. The large, solidly built, stone house in which so many generations of Galbraiths had lived and died stood in the midst of the property, sheltered by a belt of trees on rising ground from the sweeping east wind, and the laborers’ cottages, equally well constructed to resist the gales that blew across the Firth of Forth, were models of decent comfort. The livestock on the farm was well fed and cared for and the whole property bore evidence to the wealth, thrift, and intelligence of its owner.

And David Galbraith’s wife was well-to-do and thrifty like himself. She, too, was the child of a Lowland landowner and farmer, and had brought her husband no inconsiderable tocher2 while her industry and housewifely accomplishments might in themselves have served as a marriage portion. She too, like her husband, came of a douce3 Presbyterian stock, worthy, upright folk, holding by the faith and practice of their forebears; orthodox and thrifty, worshipping as their fathers had done, and hauding4 the gear as tightly, nothing doubting but that to them was especially assigned not only the good things of this world, but also of that which is to come.

Galbraith did not marry till he was a middle-aged man. But he had long had the cares of a family on his shoulders without its pleasures to lighten the burden. He was the eldest of six orphan sisters and brothers, to whom he had acted the part of a father, and it was not till Colin, the last and youngest, had left Scotland for a sheep run in Australia, with money lent him by his brother, that he felt himself at liberty to marry. But now that his pious duty towards his family was fulfilled, David Galbraith did not hesitate to take to himself a wife in the person of Miss Alison McGilivray, a lady of some five-and-thirty years of age, with large hands and feet, small grey eyes, high cheek bones, and a complexion betokening exposure to a harsh climate. She was well educated and intelligent, and in talking with her servants and poor neighbors, commonly fell into the comfortable Lowland Scotch that her father and mother had taken a pride in speaking.

Only one child was born to David and his wife in the ample home where there was space, maintenance, and welcome for a dozen. Yet this one was a son, and the Galbraiths were not doomed to die out.

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