[Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson]@TWC D-Link book
Kidnapped

CHAPTER II
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"That is the house of Shaws!" she cried.

"Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it; blood shall bring it down.

See here!" she cried again--"I spit upon the ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall! If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or bairn--black, black be their fall!" And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone.

I stood where she left me, with my hair on end.

In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out of my legs.
I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws.


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