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The Merry Men
Robert Louis Stevenson
1904 edition
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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
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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-fortun