night, and
dallied over it a little. It was a cool, dark, solemn night, starry, but
the sky charged with big black clouds. The lights in house windows you
could see, but the houses themselves were lost in the general blackness.
A church clock struck eleven as I went past, and rather startled me. The
whiteness of the road was all I had to go by. I heard an express train
roaring away down the coast into the night, and dying away sharply in
the distance; it was like the noise of an enormous rocket, or a shot
world, one would fancy. I suppose the darkness made me a little
fanciful; but when at first I was puzzled by this great sound in the
night, between sea and hills, I thought half seriously that it might be
a world broken loose--this world to wit. I stood for I suppose five
seconds with this looking-for of destruction in my head, not exactly
frightened but put out; and I wanted badly not to be overwhelmed where I
was, unless I could cry out a farewell with a great voice over the ruin
and make myself heard.--Ever your faithful friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. SITWELL

"John Knox" and "J. K." herein mentioned are the two papers on _John
Knox and His Relations with Women_, first printed in Macmillan's
Magazine and afterwards in _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_.

_Swanston, Wednesday [Autumn], 1874._

I have been hard at work all yesterday, and besides had to write a long
letter to Bob, so I found no time until quite late, and then was sleepy.
Last night it blew a fearful gale; I was kept awake about a couple of
hours, and could not get to sleep for the horror of the wind's noise;
the whole house shook; and, mind you, our house is a house, a great
castle of jointed stone that would weigh up a street of English houses;
so that when it quakes, as it did last night, it means something. But
the quaking was not what put me about; it was the horrible howl of the
wind round the corner; the audible haunting of an incarnate anger about
the house; the evil spirit that was abroad; and, above all, the
shuddering silent pauses when the storm's heart stands dreadfully still
for a moment. O how I hate a storm at night! They have been a great
influence in my life, I am sure; for I can remember them so far
back--long before I was six at least, for we left the house in which I
remember listening to them times without number when I was six. And in
those days the storm had for me a perfect impersonat