Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Roanoke of Roanoke Hall. 77 CHAPTER V. HOW THE CLATTER CAME AGAIN ; AND HOW I SAW JOHN 0’ COMPTON. By dint of reiterated questions I obtained from Meg a brief and insufficient explanation of some of the events of the previous even- ing. Stephen Ashland, she said, was ‘“‘a daft auld chiel, and Mistress Alice wasna muckle better.” Who Mistress Alice. was she either did not know or would not reveal, nor would she admit of any knowledge of John 0’ Comp- ton, maintaining that his appearance must have been a freak of my imagination. That she was acquainted with far more than she chose to divulge I gathered in course of time from various disjointed replies, ex- tracted by degrees to seemingly careless ques- tions, and I was enabled by piecing these to- gether to construct at length a fairly well- connected history of Stephen Ashland. He was born in the year 1596, and had taken part in numerous bold adventures in comichbooks.com