e island
manner, with fine kilts and fine necklaces and crowns of scarlet seeds
and flowers. Woe betide he or she who gets to speak with one of these!
They will be charmed out of their wits, and come home again quite silly,
and go mad and die. So that the poor black boy must be always trembling
and looking about for the coming of the women-devils.

Sometimes the women-devils go down out of the woods into the villages,
and here is a tale the lean man heard last year. One of the islanders
was sitting in his house, and he had cooked fish. There came along the
road two beautiful young women, dressed as I told you, who came into his
house and asked for some of his fish. It is the fashion in the islands
always to give what is asked, and never to ask folk's names. So the man
gave them fish and talked to them in the island jesting way. And
presently he asked one of the women for her red necklace, which is good
manners and their way; he had given the fish, and he had a right to ask
for something back. "I will give it you by and by," said the woman, and
she and her companion went away; but he thought they were gone very
suddenly, and the truth is they had vanished. The night was nearly come,
when the man heard the voice of the woman crying that he should come to
her and she would give the necklace. And he looked out, and behold she
was standing calling him from the top of the sea, on which she stood as
you might on the table. At that, fear came on the man; he fell on his
knees and prayed, and the woman disappeared. It was known afterwards
that this was once a woman indeed, but should have died a thousand years
ago, and has lived all that while as a devil in the woods beside the
spring of a river. Saumai-afe (Sow-my-affy) is her name, in case you
want to write to her.--Ever your friend Tusitala (tale-writer),

_alias_ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The South Sea novel here mentioned, _Sophia Scarlet_, never got
beyond the rough draft of an opening chapter or two.

_[Vailima] Jan. 31st, '92._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--No letter at all from you, and this scratch from me!
Here is a year that opens ill. Lloyd is off to "the coast" sick--_the
coast_ means California over most of the Pacific--I have been down all
month with influenza, and am just recovering--I am overlaid with proofs,
which I am just about half fit to attend to. One of my horses died this
morning, and another is now dying on the front l