DEDICATION
MY DEAR CHARLES BAXTER:
If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questionsthan I should care to answer: as for instance how the Appin murder hascome to fall in the year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so nearto Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touchesDavid Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability to crack. But if youtried me on the point of Alan's guilt or innocence, I think I coulddefend the reading of the text. To this day you will find the traditionof Appin clear in Alan's favour. If you inquire, you may even hear thatthe descendants of "the other man" who fired the shot are in the countryto this day. But that other man's name, inquire as you please, you shallnot hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for thecongenial exercise of keeping it. I might go on for long to justify onepoint and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at oncehow little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniturefor the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-roomwhen the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honestAlan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day has in this new avatarno more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attentionfrom 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 this tale.But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased tofind his father's name on the fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleasesme to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (nowperhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange forme to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygoneadventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the samestreets--who may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative,where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved andinglorious Macbean--or may pass the corner of the close where that greatsociety, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting inthe seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving thereby plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places thathave 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.
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