in chapter of _My First Book_
reprinted in _Edinburgh Edition_, several chapters of _Treasure Island_.
On that point R. L. Stevenson, myself, and Mr James Henderson, to whom I
took these, could not all be wrong and co-operating to mislead the
public. These chapters, at least vii. or viii., as Mr Henderson
remembers, would include the _first three_, that is, _finally revised
versions for press_. Mr Gosse could not then _have heard R. L. Stevenson
read from these final versions but from first draughts_ ONLY, and I am
positively certain that with some of the later chapters R. L. Stevenson
wrote them off-hand, and with great ease, and did not revise them to the
extent of at all needing to re-write them, as I remember he was proud to
tell me, being then fully in the vein, as he put it, and pleased to
credit me with a share in this good result, and saying "my enthusiasm
over it had set him up steep." There was then, in my idea, a necessity
that Stevenson should fill up a gap by verbal summary to Mr Gosse (which
Mr Gosse has forgotten), bringing the incident up to a further point than
Mr Gosse now thinks. I am certain of my facts under this head; and as Mr
Gosse clearly fancies he heard R. L. Stevenson read all from final
versions and is mistaken--_completely_ mistaken there--he may be just as
wrong and the victim of error or bad memory elsewhere after the lapse of
more than twenty years.

2. I gave the pencilled outline of incident and plot to Mr Henderson--a
fact he distinctly remembers. This fact completely meets and disposes of
Mr Robert Leighton's quite imaginative _Billy Bo'sun_ notion, and is
absolute as to R. L. Stevenson before he left Braemar on the 21st
September 1881, or even before I left it on 26th August 1881, having
clear in his mind the whole scheme of the work, though we know very well
that the absolute re-writing out finally for press of the concluding part
of the book was done at Davos. Mr Henderson has always made it the
strictest rule in his editorship that the complete outline of the plot
and incident of the latter part of a story must be supplied to him, if
the whole story is not submitted to him in MS.; and the agreement, if I
am not much mistaken, was entered into days before R. L. Stevenson left
Braemar, and when he came up to London some short time after to go to
Weybridge, the only arrangement then needed to be made was about the
forwarding of proofs to him.

The publication of _Treasure Isl