Kidnapped

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father’s house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.

My father and mother were both dead, and I was on my way to the house of my uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, the laird of Shaws, to claim the inheritance that my father had promised me. I had a letter in my pocket, sealed with my father’s ring, and I was full of a boy’s natural hope and curiosity about the fine gentleman I was going to meet.