

E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Karen Dalrymple, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY

A Romance

by

EGERTON CASTLE

  Author of
  "The Pride of Jennico," "Young
  April," etc.







"Take whichsoever way thou wilt--the ways are all alike;
But do thou only come--I bade my threshold wait thy coming.
From out my window one can see the graves, and on my life
The graves keep watch." _Luteplayer's Song._



New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
MCM

Copyright, 1899,
by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
All rights reserved.

Fourth Edition.




  I Dedicate
  THIS BOOK TO THE
  MEMORY OF
  FREDERICK ANDREWS LARKING
  OF THE ROCKS, EAST MALLING, KENT
  THAT, SO LONG AS ANYTHING OF MINE SHALL ENDURE,
  THERE MAY ENDURE ALSO
  A RECORD OF OUR FRIENDSHIP AND OF
  MY SORROW




PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.


_Among the works of every writer of Fiction there are generally one or
two that owe their being to some_ haunting _thought, long communed
with--a thought which has at last found a living shape in some story
of deed and passion._

_I say one or two advisedly: for the span of man's active life is
short and such haunting fancies are, of their essence, solitary. As a
matter of fact, indeed, the majority of a novelist's creations belong
to another class, must of necessity (if he be a prolific creator) find
their conception in more sudden impulses. The great family of the
"children of his brain" must be born of inspirations ever new, and in
alluring freshness go forth into the world surrounded by the
atmosphere of their author's present mood, decked in the colours of
his latest imaginings, strengthened by his latest passional
impressions and philosophical conclusions._

_In the latter category the lack of long intimate acquaintance between
the author and the friends or foes he depicts, is amply compensated
for by the enthusiasm appertaining to new discoveries, as each
character reveals itself, often in quite unforeseen manner, and the
consequences of each event shape themselves inevitably and sometimes
indeed almost against his will._

_Although dissimilar in their genesis, both kinds of stories can, in
the telling, be equally life-like and equally alluring to the reader.
But what of the writer? Among his literary family is there not one
nearer his heart than all the rest--his_ dream-child? _It may be the
stoutest of the breed or it may be the weakling; it may be the
first-born, it often is the Benjamin. Fathers in the flesh know this
secret tenderness. Many a child and many a book is brooded over with a
special love even before its birth.--Loved thus, for no grace or merit
of its own, this book is my dream-child._

       *       *       *       *       *

_Here, by the way, I should like to say my word in honour of
_Fiction_--"fiction" contradistinguished from what is popularly termed
"serious" writing._

_If, in a story, the characters and the events are truly convincing;
if the former are appealingly human and the latter are so carefully
devised and described as never to evoke the idea of improbability,
then it can make no difference in the_ intellectual pleasure _of the
reader whether what he is made to realise so vividly is a record of
fact or of mere fancy. Facts we read of are of necessity past: what is
past, what is beyond the immediate ken of our senses, can only be
realised in imagination; and the picture we are able to make of it for
ourselves depends altogether on the sympathetic skill of the recorder.
Is not Diana Vernon, born and bred in Scott's imagination, to the full
as living now before us as Rob Roy Macgregor whose existence was so
undeniably tangible to the men of his days? Do we not see, in our
mind's eye, and know as clearly the lovable "girt John Ridd" of_ Lorna
Doone _the romance as his contemporaries, Mr. Samuel Pepys of the hard
and uncompromising_ Diary _or King James of_ English Annals?

_Pictures, alike of the plainest facts or of the veriest imaginings,
are but pictures: it matters very little therefore whether the man or
the woman we read of but never can see in the flesh has really lived