in
on every side; and the swift, brown river fled smoothly away from before
our eyes, rippled over with oily eddies and dimples. White gulls had
come up from the sea to fish, and hovered and flew hither and thither
among the loops of the stream. By good fortune, too, it was a dead calm
between my father and me. Do you know, I find these rows harder on me
than ever. I get a funny swimming in the head when they come on that I
had not before--and the like when I think of them.

R. L. S.

TO MRS. SITWELL

_[Edinburgh], Monday, 22nd September 1873._

I have just had another disagreeable to-night. It is difficult indeed to
steer steady among the breakers: I am always touching ground; generally
it is my own blame, for I cannot help getting friendly with my father
(whom I _do_ love), and so speaking foolishly with my mouth. I have yet
to learn in ordinary conversation that reserve and silence that I must
try to unlearn in the matter of the feelings.

The news that _Roads_ would do reached me in good season; I had begun
utterly to despair of doing anything. Certainly I do not think I should
be in a hurry to commit myself about the Covenanters; the whole subject
turns round about me and so branches out to this side and that, that I
grow bewildered; and one cannot write discreetly about any one little
corner of an historical period, until one has an organic view of the
whole. I have, however--given life and health--great hope of my
Covenanters; indeed, there is a lot of precious dust to be beaten out of
that stack even by a very infirm hand.

_Much later._--I can scarcely see to write just now; so please excuse.
We have had an awful scene. All that my father had to say has been put
forth--not that it was anything new; only it is the devil to hear. I
don't know what to do--the world goes hopelessly round about me; there
is no more possibility of doing, living, being anything but a _beast_,
and there's the end of it.

It is eleven, I think, for a clock struck. O Lord, there has been a deal
of time through our hands since I went down to supper! All this has come
from my own folly; I somehow could not think the gulf so impassable, and
I read him some notes on the Duke of Argyll[8]--I thought he would agree
so far, and that we might have some rational discussion on the rest. And
now--after some hours--he has told me that he is a weak man, and that I
am driving him too far, and that I know not what I am doing.