is more than
ships or liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth
nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. Come, I
have paid for it dearly, be not so churlish."

'"An I had my ship," said Arblaster, "I would 'a' been forth and safe
on the high seas--I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, and
I'm a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in russet shot him
down, 'Murrain,' quoth he, and spake never again. 'Murrain' was the
last of his words, and the poor spirit of him passed. 'A will never
sail no more, will my Tom."

'Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he sought to take
the skipper's hand, but Arblaster avoided his touch.

'"Nay," said he, "let be. Y' have played the devil with me, and let
that content you."

'The words died in Richard's throat. He saw, through tears, the poor
old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go shambling away, with bowed
head, across the snow, and the unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels;
and for the first time began to understand the desperate game that we
play in life, and how a thing once done is not to be changed or
remedied by any penitence.'

A similar wisdom that goes to the heart of things is found on the lips of
the spiritual visitant in Markheim.

'"Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All sins
are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like
starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of
famine, and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the
moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is
death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who thwarts her mother with
such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with
human gore than such a murderer as yourself."'

The wide outlook on humanity that expresses itself in passages like these
is combined in Stevenson with a vivid interest in, and quick appreciation
of, character. The variety of the characters that he has essayed to draw
is enormous, and his successes, for the purposes of his stories, are
many. Yet with all this, the number of lifelike portraits, true to a
hair, that are to be found in his works is very small indeed. In the
golden glow of romance, character is always subject to be idealised; it
is the effect of character seen at particular angles and in special
lights, natur