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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Waif Woman, by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Title: The Waif Woman
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release Date: November 10, 2006 [eBook #19750]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAIF WOMAN***
Transcribed from the 1916 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
THE WAIF WOMAN
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1916
First Edition, October, 1916. Second Edition, October, 1916.
This unpublished story, preserved among Mrs. Stevenson's papers, is mentioned by Mr. Balfour in his life of Stevenson. Writing of the fables which Stevenson began before he had left England and "attacked again, and from time to time added to their number" in 1893, Mr. Balfour says: "The reference to Odin [Fable XVII] perhaps is due to his reading of the Sagas, which led him to attempt a tale in the same style, called 'The Waif Woman.'"
THE WAIF WOMAN A CUE--FROM A SAGA
This is a tale of Iceland, the isle of stories, and of a thing that befell in the year of the coming there of Christianity.
In the spring of that year a ship sailed from the South Isles to traffic, and fell becalmed inside Snowfellness. The winds had speeded her; she was th