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, brothers, of the house of Shaws near Cramond in the Forest of Ettrick, being in love with the same lady, and she preferring the elder brother, Alexander, it was agreed between them that Alexander should take the lady, and Ebenezer, as amends for his disappointment, the estate of Shaws. Alexander and his wife removed to Essendean, where they lived obscurely, Alexander in the character of village schoolmaster and where an only son was born to them, namely David Balfour, the hero of this history. David, brought up in ignorance of the family affairs and of his own claim on the estates, and losing both parents before he was eighteen, was left with no other fortune than a sealed letter from his father addressed to his uncle Ebenezer, which was handed him by the minister of Essendean, Mr. Campbell. Proceeding to deliver it, David found his uncle living childless and a miser at Shaws; who received him ill, and after vainly endeavouring to compass his death, had him trepanned on board the brig Covenant, Captain Hoseason, bound to Carolina, to the end that he might be sold to labour in the plantations. But early in the voyage, the Covenant, running through the Minch, struck and sent to the bottom an open boat, from which there saved himself and came on board one Alan Breck Stewart, a Highland gentleman banished after the '45, and now engaged in smuggling rents from his clansmen, the Appin Stewarts, to their chief Ardshiel, living in exile in France.