these forest haunts had
charmed and soothed him, as we have seen, since he was first introduced
to them by his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, in the spring of 1875. An
unfettered, unconventional, open-air existence, passed face to face with
nature and in the company of congenial people engaged, like himself, in
grappling with the problems and difficulties of an art, had been what he
had longed for most consistently through all the agitations of his
youth. And now he had found just such an existence, and with it, as he
thought, peace of mind, health, and the spirit of unimpeded work.

But peace of mind was not to be his for long. What indeed awaited him in
the forest was something different and more momentous: it was his fate:
the romance which decided his life, and the companion whom he resolved
to make his own at all hazards. But of this hereafter. To continue
briefly the annals of the time: the year 1877 was again spent between
Edinburgh, London, the Fontainebleau region, and several different
temporary abodes in the artists' and other quarters of Paris; with an
excursion in the company of his parents to the Land's End in August. In
1878 a similar general mode of life was varied by a visit with his
parents in March to Burford Bridge, where he made warm friends with a
senior to whom he had long looked up from a distance, Mr. George
Meredith; by a spell of secretarial work under Professor Fleeming
Jenkin, who was serving as a juror on the Paris Exhibition; and lastly,
by the autumn tramp through the Cevennes, afterwards recounted with so
much charm in _Travels with a Donkey_. The first half of 1879 was again
spent between London, Scotland, and France.

During these four years, it should be added, Stevenson's health was very
passable. It often, indeed, threatened to give way after any prolonged
residence in Edinburgh, but was generally soon restored by open-air
excursions (during which he was capable of fairly vigorous and sustained
daily exercise), or by a spell of life among the woods of Fontainebleau.
They were also the years in which he settled for good into his chosen
profession of letters. He worked rather desultorily for the first twelve
months after his call to the Bar, but afterwards with ever-growing
industry and success, winning from the critical a full measure of
recognition, though relatively little, so far, from the general public.
In 1875 and 1876 he contributed as a journalist, though not frequently,
to