iety for his health and advances of
money from his father, with strict instructions that from now on he was
no longer to stint and deny himself the bare necessities of life, as he
had been doing. Later, in April, came a telegram from Thomas Stevenson
saying that in future Louis was to count on an income of two hundred and
fifty pounds a year.

Cheered with the prospect of an easier road ahead of him, he struggled
back to life once more with a strong resolve to work harder and make
those at home proud of him.

"It was a considerable shock to my pride to break down," he wrote to a
friend, "but there it's done and can not be helped. Had my health held
out another month, I should have made a year's income, but breaking
down when I did, I am surrounded by unfinished works. It is a good thing
my father was on the spot, or I should have had to work and die."

Early in the spring he and Mrs. Osbourne met again, and on May 19, 1880,
they were married in San Francisco.

For the rest of his life Stevenson had no cause to complain of
loneliness, for in his wife he had an "inseparable sharer of all his
adventures; the most open-hearted of friends to all those who loved him;
the most shrewd and stimulating critic of his work; and in sickness,
despite her own precarious health, the most devoted and most efficient
of nurses."

Immediately after their marriage Stevenson and his wife and stepson--and
the dog--went to the Coast Range Mountains and, taking possession of an
old deserted miner's camp, practically lived out-of-doors for the next
few months, with no neighbors aside from a hunter and his family.

This was healthy, but the life of a squatter has its limitations, and
their trials and tribulations during these weeks Stevenson told most
amusingly in "The Silverado Squatters."

Gradually a longing began to come to R.L.S. to see those at home once
more and have them know his wife. This desire grew so from day to day
that July found them bidding good-by to California, and on the 7th of
August they sailed from New York for Liverpool.

CHAPTER VI

SCOTLAND AGAIN

"Bells upon the city are ringing in the night,
High above the gardens are the houses full of light,
On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free,
And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

"We canna break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind,
Far away from home O, it's stil