From “The Siege of the Round-House,” Kidnapped. Holograph, p. 59.
Since the Huntington Library holograph is incomplete, ending with chapter 27, I have based the last three chapters of this edition on the Young Folks Paper serial. Minor emendations have been made to that copytext, in accordance with Stevenson’s practice in the autograph: periods were dropped after the courtesy title (“Mr”), hyphens removed in seven words, and one spelling change made (blythe for blithe).
Robert Louis Stevenson
Dedication
My dear Charles Baxter,
If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questions than I should care to answer: as for instance how the Appin murder has come to fall in the year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so near to Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touches David Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability to crack. But if you tried me on the point of Alan’s guilt or innocence, I think I could defend the reading of the text. To this day you will find the tradition of Appin clear in Alan’s favour. If you inquire, you may even hear that the descendants of “the other man” who fired the shot are in the country to this day. But that other man’s name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it. I might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar’s library, but a book for the winter evening schoolroom when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day, has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman’s attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.
As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to like the tale. But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to find his father’s name on the fly leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets—who may tomorrow open the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and inglorious Macbean—or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the L.J.R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places that have now become for your companion a part of the scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of present business, the past must echo in your memory! Let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend.
R.L.S. Skerryvore, Bournemouth.
Contents
1. I Set Off upon My Journey to the House of Shaws
2. I Come to My Journey’s End
3. I Make Acquaintance of My Uncle
4. I Run a Great Danger in tie House of Shaws
5. I Go to the Queen’s Ferry
6. What Befell at the Queen’s Ferry
7. I Go to Sea in the Brig Covenant of Dysart
8. The Round-House
9. The Man with the Belt of Gold
10. The Siege of the Round-House
11. The Captain Knuckles Under
12. I Hear of the Red Fox
13. The Loss of the Brig
14. The Islet
15. The Lad with the Silver Button: Through the Isle of Mull
16. The Lad with the Silver Button: Across Morven
17. The Death of the Red Fox
18. I Talk with Alan in the Wood of Lettermore
19. The House of Fear
20. The Flight in the Heather: The Rocks
21. The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of Corrynakiegh
22. The Flight in the Heather: The Muir
23. Cluny’s Cage
24. The Flight in the Heather: The Quarrel
25. In Balquidder
26. We Pass the Forth
27. I Come to Mr Rankeillor
28. I Go in Quest of My Inheritance
29. I Come into My Kingdom
30. Good-bye
I Set Off upon My Journey to the House of Shaws
I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father’s house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.
Mr Campbell, the minister of Essendean, was waiting for me by the garden gate, good man! He asked me if I had breakfasted;
