THE HONOUR OF ISRAEL GOW
a story found IN THE COMPLETE FATHER BROWN
G.K. CHESTERTON

a few lines of stunning prose

" This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry, was not mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest on the place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrow which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any other of the children of men. For Scotland has a double dose of the poison called heredity; the sense of blood in the aristocrat, and the sense of doom in the Calvinist.

The priest......investigating the life and death of the late Earl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative of a race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had made them terrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in the sixteenth century. None were deeper in the labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within chamber of that palace of lies that was built up around Mary Queen of Scots."


G.K. Chesterton. I am humbled in the presence of your words.