White Cockades

Young Boyd did not cut down oak-trees for a livelihood, though he just now worked as if fortune had mapped a no less arduous career for him. He was the only son of a wealthy landholder of the vicinity, a man of English descent and English thrift. Andrew's grandfather came north into Scotland from Shrewsbury, in a sort of angry freak after a local quarrel. He bought and developed a valuable farm near Loch Arkaig, and then suddenly died upon it, leaving the newly acquired estate to Gilbert Boyd, the father of young Andrew. All of which had happened some forty years before this tale's beginning.