l action taken in the matter,
but the papers yelped at me, and folk looked askance when I met them.
It ended by my cursing them and their vile, smoke-polluted town, and
hurrying to my northern possession, where I might at last find peace and
an opportunity for solitary study and contemplation. I borrowed from
my capital before I went, and so was able to take with me a choice
collection of the most modern philosophical instruments and books,
together with chemicals and such other things as I might need in my
retirement.

The land which I had inherited was a narrow strip, consisting mostly of
sand, and extending for rather over two miles round the coast of Mansie
Bay, in Caithness. Upon this strip there had been a rambling, grey-stone
building--when erected or wherefore none could tell me--and this I had
repaired, so that it made a dwelling quite good enough for one of my
simple tastes. One room was my laboratory, another my sitting-room, and
in a third, just under the sloping roof, I slung the hammock in which
I always slept. There were three other rooms, but I left them vacant,
except one which was given over to the old crone who kept house for me.
Save the Youngs and the M'Leods, who were fisher-folk living round at
the other side of Fergus Ness, there were no other people for many miles
in each direction. In front of the house was the great bay, behind it
were two long barren hills, capped by other loftier ones beyond. There
was a glen between the hills, and when the wind was from the land it
used to sweep down this with a melancholy sough and whisper among the
branches of the fir-trees beneath my attic window.

I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they appear
for the most part to dislike me. I hate their little crawling ways,
their conventionalities, their deceits, their narrow rights and wrongs.
They take offence at my brusque outspokenness, my disregard for their
social laws, my impatience of all constraint. Among my books and my
drugs in my lonely den at Mansie I could let the great drove of
the human race pass onwards with their politics and inventions and
tittle-tattle, and I remained behind stagnant and happy. Not stagnant
either, for I was working in my own little groove, and making progress.
I have reason to believe that Dalton's atomic theory is founded upon
error, and I know that mercury is not an element.

During the day I was busy with my distillations and analyses. Often I
forgo