you may remember the fortune he was to
earn, the journeys he was to go upon, the delights he was to enjoy and
confer, and (among other matters) the masterpiece he was to make of
'Prince Otto'!

Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten. We read together
in those days the story of Braddock, and how, as he was carried dying
from the scene of his defeat, he promised himself to do better another
time: a story that will always touch a brave heart, and a dying speech
worthy of a more fortunate commander. I try to be of Braddock's mind. I
still mean to get my health again; I still purpose, by hook or crook,
this book or the next, to launch a masterpiece; and I still
intend--somehow, some time or other--to see your face and to hold your
hand.

Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead, crosses the
great seas and the long plains and the dark mountains, and comes at last
to your door in Monterey, charged with tender greetings. Pray you, take
him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your own) there are
gathered together some of the waifs of our company at Oakland: a
house--for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant station--where you
are well-beloved.

R. L. S.

_Skerryvore_,
Bournemouth.

BOOK I--PRINCE ERRANT

CHAPTER I--IN WHICH THE PRINCE DEPARTS ON AN ADVENTURE

You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state of
Grunewald. An independent principality, an infinitesimal member of the
German Empire, she played, for several centuries, her part in the discord
of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at the spiriting of
several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning ghost. Less fortunate
than Poland, she left not a regret behind her; and the very memory of her
boundaries has faded.

It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood. Many streams
took their beginning in the glens of Grunewald, turning mills for the
inhabitants. There was one town, Mittwalden, and many brown, wooden
hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep bottom of dells, and
communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The
hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine
sawdust, the sound and smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable
army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull
stroke of the wood-axe, i