by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON and FANNY VAN de GRIFT STEVENSON The Silver Library new impression LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 paternoster row , london new york and bombay 1903 All rights reserved bibliographic note First Edition , April 1885 ; Reprinted May 1885 , July 1885 . Silver Library Edition , January 1895 ; Reprinted March 1897 , July 1899 , August 1903 ....

Gentlemen,—In the volume now in your hands , the authors have touched upon that ugly devil of crime , with which it is your glory to have contended .  It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious spirit .  Let us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled strain , where crime preserves some features of nobility , and where reason and humanity can still relish the temptation .  Horror , in this case , is due to Mr. Parnell : he sits before posterity silent , Mr. Forster’s appeal echoing down t

It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume, and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of New Arabian Nights .  The loss is yours—and mine; or to be more exact, my publishers’.  But if you are thus unlucky, the least I can do is to pass you a hint.  When you shall find a reference in the following pages to one Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street, Soho, you must be prepared to recognise, under his features, no less a pers

In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation.  The first, who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best fashion, hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion. ‘What!’ he cried, ‘Paul Somerset!’ ‘I am indeed Paul Somerset,’ returned the other, ‘or what remains of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty an

Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney, where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of the people of the house.  To this remote home he found himself, at a very early hour in the morning of the next day, condemned to set forth on foot.  He was a young man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body; bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses.  In happier days he would have chartered a cab; but these luxuries were now denied hi

My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great, ancient, but untitled family; and by some event, fault or misfortune, he was driven to flee from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name of his ancestors.  He sought the States; and instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed at once into the far West with an exploring party of frontiersmen.  He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not only brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many sciences, and above all in

What with the lady’s animated manner and dramatic conduct of her voice, Challoner had thrilled to every incident with genuine emotion.  His fancy, which was not perhaps of a very lively character, applauded both the matter and the style; but the more judicial functions of his mind refused assent.  It was an excellent story; and it might be true, but he believed it was not.  Miss Fonblanque was a lady, and it was doubtless possible for a lady to wander from the truth; but how was a gentleman to t

Mr. Paul Somerset was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery imagination, with very small capacity for action.  He was one who lived exclusively in dreams and in the future: the creature of his own theories, and an actor in his own romances.  From the cigar divan he proceeded to parade the streets, still heated with the fire of his eloquence, and scouting upon every side for the offer of some fortunate adventure.  In the continual stream of passers-by, on the sealed fronts of houses, on the pos

I was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who held a valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells.  Our family, a very large one, was noted for a sprightly and incisive wit, and came of a good old stock where beauty was an heirloom.  In Christian grace of character we were unhappily deficient.  From my earliest years I saw and deplored the defects of those relatives whose age and position should have enabled them to conquer my esteem; and while I was yet a child, my father

I dined by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in a private chamber at St. James’s Hall.  You have seen the man: it was M’Guire, the most chivalrous of creatures, but not himself expert in our contrivances.  Hence the necessity of our meeting; for I need not remind you what enormous issues depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine.  I set our little petard for half an hour, the scene of action being hard by; and the better to avert miscarriage, employed a device, a recent invent

Somerset in vain strove to attach a meaning to these words.  He had, in the meanwhile, applied himself assiduously to the flagon; the plotter began to melt in twain, and seemed to expand and hover on his seat; and with a vague sense of nightmare, the young man rose unsteadily to his feet, and, refusing the proffer of a third grog, insisted that the hour was late and he must positively get to bed. ‘Dear me,’ observed Zero, ‘I find you very temperate.  But I will not be oppressive.  Suffice it tha

Mr. Harry Desborough lodged in the fine and grave old quarter of Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of London, but itself rejoicing in romantic silences and city peace.  It was in Queen Square that he had pitched his tent, next door to the Children’s Hospital, on your left hand as you go north: Queen Square, sacred to humane and liberal arts, whence homes were made beautiful, where the poor were taught, where the sparrows were plentiful and loud, and where groups of patient

I am not what I seem.  My father drew his descent, on the one hand, from grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal line, from the patriot Bruce.  My mother, too, was the descendant of a line of kings; but, alas! these kings were African.  She was fair as the day: fairer than I, for I inherited a darker strain of blood from the veins of my European father; her mind was noble, her manners queenly and accomplished; and seeing her more than the equal of her neighbours, and surrounded

The effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was instant and convincing.  The Fair Cuban had been already the loveliest, she now became, in his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent, and the most unhappy of her sex.  He was bereft of words to utter what he felt: what pity, what admiration, what youthful envy of a career so vivid and adventurous.  ‘O madam!’ he began; and finding no language adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her hand and wrung it in his own.  ‘Count upon me,’

Somerset ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary to all custom, was unlocked; and bursting in, the young man found Zero seated on a sofa in an attitude of singular dejection.  Close beside him stood an untasted grog, the mark of strong preoccupation.  The room besides was in confusion: boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor was strewn with keys and other implements; and in the midst of this disorder lay a lady’s glove. ‘I have come,’ cried Somerset, ‘to make an end of

On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in Rupert Street.  It was a place he had visited but once before: the memory of what had followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset having prevented his return.  Even now, he looked in before he entered; but the shop was free of customers. The young man behind the counter was so intently w