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shall be accomplished! For so long a time, the slant is to
continue unchanged, the vein to keep running, for so long a time
you must keep at command the same quality of style: for so long a
time your puppets are to be always vital, always consistent, always
vigorous! I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every
three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat--not
possibly of literature--but at least of physical and moral
endurance and the courage of Ajax.
In the fated year I came to live with my father and mother at
Kinnaird, above Pitlochry. Then I walked on the red moors and by
the side of the golden burn; the rude, pure air of our mountains
inspirited, if it did not inspire us, and my wife and I projected a
joint volume of logic stories, for which she wrote 'The Shadow on
the Bed,' and I turned out 'Thrawn Janet,' and a first draft of
'The Merry Men.' I love my native air, but it does not love me;
and the end of this delightful period was a cold, a fly-blister,
and a migration by Strathairdle and Glenshee to the Castleton of
Braemar.
There it blew a good deal and rained in a proportion; my native air
was more unkind than man's ingratitude, and I must consent to pass
a good deal of my time between four walls in a house lugubriously
known as the Late Miss McGregor's Cottage. And now admire the
finger of predestination. There was a schoolboy in the Late Miss
McGregor's Cottage, home from the holidays, and much in want of
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