The Merry Men

The Merry Men
Robert Louis Stevenson
1904 edition
***
Contents:
The Merry Men
i. Eilean Aros
ii. What the wreck had brought to Aros
iii. Land and sea in Sandag Bay
iv. The gale
v. A man out of the sea
Will o' the Mill
i. The plain and the stars
ii. The Parson's Marjory
iii. Death
Markheim
Thrawn Janet
Olalla
The Treasure of Franchard

i. By the dying Mountebank
ii. Morning tale
iii. The adoption
iv. The education of the philosopher
v. Treasure trove
vi. A criminal investigation, in two parts
vii. The fall of the House of Desprez
viii. The wages of philosophy
***
THE MERRY MEN
CHAPTER I.
EILEAN AROS.
IT WAS a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot for
the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the night before at
Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving all
my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea, struck
right across the promontory with a cheerful heart.
I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from an
unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after
a poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife
in the islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and
when she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm, had
remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means of
life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had
pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a
fresh adventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at

destiny. Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought
neither help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in
the lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my
father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to die,
but he left a son to his name and a little money to support it. I was a
student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own charges,
but without kith or kin; when some news of me found its way to Uncle
Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held
blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence,
and taught me to count Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to
spend my vacations in that part of the country, so far from all society
and comfort, between the codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was
that now, when I had done with my classes, I was returning thither with
so light a heart that July day.
The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but as
rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of it, full
of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen - all overlooked from
the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peals of Ben Kyaw.
THE MOUNTAIN OF THE MIST, they say the words signify in the
Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill- top, which is more
than three thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come
blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it
must make them for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea
level, there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water,
too, and was mossy (1) to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting
in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape
upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more
beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hill sides, there
were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as
far as Aros, fifteen miles away.
The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly to
double the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that a
man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where
the moss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere,
and not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of

course there were - three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or
the other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A
large part of the Ross