Transcribed from the 1913 Chatto and Windus edition by DavidPrice,
WEIR OF HERMISTON
AN UNFINISHED ROMANCE
by
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
fine-paperedition
london
CHATTO & WINDUS
1913
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
TO MY WIFE
I saw rain falling and the rainbowdrawn
On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again
In my precipitous city beaten bells
Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar,
Intent on my own race and place, I wrote.
Take thou the writing: thine itis. For who
Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal,
Held still the target higher, chary of praise
And prodigal of counsel—who but thou?
So now, in the end, if this the least begood,
If any deed be done, if any fire
Burn in the imperfect page, the praise bethine.
INTRODUCTORY
In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight ofany house, there stands a cairn among the heather, and a littleby east of it, in the going down of the brae-side, a monumentwith some verses half defaced. It was here that Claverhouseshot with his own hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and thechisel of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonelygravestone. Public and domestic history have thus markedwith a bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since theCameronian gave his life there, two hundred years ago, in aglorious folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silenceof the moss has been broken once again by the report of firearmsand the cry of the dying.
The Deil’s Hags was the old name. But the place isnow called Francie’s Cairn. For a while it was toldthat Francie walked. Aggic Hogg met him in the gloaming bythe cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chattering teeth, sothat his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if any onecould have believed Robbie) for the space of half a mile withpitiful entreaties. But the age is one of incredulity;these superstitious decorations speedily fell off; and the factsof the story itself, like the bones of a giant buried there andhalf dug up, survived, naked and imperfect, in the memory of thescattered neighbours. To this day, of winter nights, whenthe sleet is on the window and the cattle are quiet in the byre,there will be told again, amid the silence of the young and theadditions and corrections of the old, the tale of theJustice-Clerk and of his son, young Hermiston, that vanished frommen’s knowledge; of the two Kirsties and the Four BlackBrothers of the Cauldstaneslap; and of Frank Innes, “theyoung fool advocate,” that came into these moorland partsto find his destiny.
CHAPTER I—LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR
The Lord Justice-Clerk was a stranger in that part of thecountry; but his lady wife was known there from a child, as herrace had been before her. The old “riding Rutherfordsof Hermiston,” of whom she was the last descendant, hadbeen famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill subjects, and illhusbands to their wives though not their p