Huntingtower (1922). By

Huntingtower is a 1922 novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It is the first of his three Dickson McCunn books. The action takes place in Scotland, in the district of Carrick in Galloway. Plot summary Having sold his Glasgow grocery-store business, 55-year old Dickson McCunn decides to start his retirement with a walking holiday in the district of Carrick in Galloway. At a local inn he meets John Hermitage, a poet and ex-soldier, as well as an unnamed young man who asks after a place called 'Darkwater' that nobody has heard of. McCunn and Heritage decide to spend the next night at the village of Dalquaharter where they are taken in by a local widow, Phemie Morran. They investigate the local big house, Huntingtower, where - although the place is ostensibly empty - they hear a woman singing. Hermitage recognises the voice as that of a Russian princess he had fallen in love with from afar when his battalion had been posted to Rome some years earlier. On a camping holiday nearby are the Gorbals Die-Hards, a group of street-urchins from Glasgow that McCunn had recently supported via a contribution to a charity fund. Their leader, Douglas Crombie, tells them that two women are being kept prisoner. They get into the house and find Saskia, princess of one of the great families of Russia, and her elderly cousin Eugènie. Saskia explains that she is a fugitive from Bolshevik elements in Russia, and that she came to Huntingtower at the invitation of its owner, her childhood friend Quentin Kennedy. On arrival she was betrayed by the corrupt local factor, James Loudon, and was taken prisoner. She fears the imminent arrival of a man who is likely to kill her - later disclosed as the Bolshevik leader Paul Abreskov. She is desperately hoping for the appearance of a 'friend' to whom she has sent word (Alexis Nicolaevich, her fiancé). Saskia has been placed in charge of her family's jewels, and McCunn agrees to deposit them with his local bank in Glasgow. They learn that Paul's followers are expected to arrive by sea in a Danish brig. Hermitage is left alone in the Old Tower nearby to act as a decoy...................... John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, GCMG, GCVO, CH, PC ( 26 August 1875 - 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation. After a brief legal career, Buchan simultaneously began his writing career and his political and diplomatic careers, serving as a private secretary to the colonial administrator of various colonies in southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort in the First World War. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction. In 1935, he was appointed Governor General of Canada by King George V on the recommendation of Prime Minister of Canada R. B. Bennett, to replace the Earl of Bessborough. He occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan was enthusiastic about literacy and the development of Canadian culture, and he received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom...........