Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott (1816)

This appeared in the first volumes of Tales of My Landlord along with The Black Dwarf. Old Mortality is a man who wanders Scotland in a lonely hermitlike way tidying the graves of forgotten Scots heroes and people of principle. This story is one that he promoted through his activities - and that's the last we hear of him, the rest is the story itself. It centres around Henry Morton, heir of Milnwood, who, in the time of Charles II, becomes a key figure in the rebellion based around religious ideas that culminated in the battle of Bothwell Bridge. Morton is in love with Edith Bellenden of Tillietudlem Castle, but the spanner in the works is that the Bellendens are supporters of the monarchy, while Morton's principles of freedom of religion lead him to support the raggletaggle army of the rebels. The ideas behind the rebellion range from a manial fundamental ultra-Puritan protestantism through to Morton's style of broad church requirement for freedom to worship. He is a constant calming voice among his more uncompromising and bloodthirsty fellows, insanely fired as they are by what they deem to be virtually a pro-Catholic conspiracy, and what does seem to be confirmed prejudice at the least. Morton's rival for Edith's affections is the royalist Lord Evandale, a handsome young blade who is deeply attached to her, and whom she feels she must reluctantly settle for given that Morton is persona non grata. After a surprising initial success the tide turns and the rebels are routed at Bothwell Bridge. Morton escapes on a Dutch boat, leaving the personal field open to Evandale. The Dutch boat sinks halfway across the channel and Morton is assumed drowned, but he is rescued and spends a good while incognito in the Netherlands. Some years later, with the revolution which installed William and Mary on the throne, he returns to Scotland, unaware that he is dead in most people's minds. Wandering under an assumed name he discovers that Evandale and Edith are about to be married, and that through political means Tillietudlem has been wrested from the Bellendens by their evil cousin Basil Olifant. He travels to Fairy Knowe, the Bellendens' much reduced home, secretly, hoping to see Edith one more time. She catches sight of him, assumes she's seen a ghost, and collapses. The recollection, once she awakens, is too much, and the marriage to Evandale cannot go ahead. Evandale, meanwhile, has changed sides and is a supporter of the faction which is critical of the monarchy. Basil Olifant, a firm monarchist, comes to Fairy Knowe with some royal dragoons to capture Evandale, but the arrest turns into a pistolfight. Olifant is killed, Evandale is shot. Just before expiring he brings Morton and Edith together giving them his blessing. By a strange twist of fate Olifant has died without a will, so the Bellendens reinherit Tillietudlem! There's a neat ending. Scott's usual brightness is pretty undimmed here; the battles are brief but exciting, the intrigue is enjoyably complicated and there is humour too in cranky retainers and Lady Margaret Bellenden (Edith's mother) and her obsessed overdressed memory of a one-night royal stay at Tillietudlem and the importance it confers on her family. Without being his best, this was fine.