nburgh and saw him there, and it was arranged
between us that I should deliver to him six chapters of an original
novel per week, that I should remain in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh
in order to give him opportunity for consultation from time to time, and
that whilst the book was being written I should receive a living wage.
He recommended me to locate myself in Portobello, and there in the dead
season I had no difficulty in finding lodgings.

I had scarcely deposited my portmanteau when I set to work. I began to
write without the faintest idea of a plan, and for the first day or
two I swam boldly enough along the stream of chance. The first chapters
pleased Robert Chambers greatly and he was wise and generous enough to
say so. For six tremendous weeks I wrote, beginning punctually every
morning at eight o'clock and pretty generally bringing the day's work to
a finish in the neighbourhood of midnight. I gave myself two half-hours
for exercise and rambled in all sorts of weather about the sands and the
deserted promenade. I was approaching the end of the work when a very
curious experience befell me. I was sitting towards the end of the day's
labour at my table when I felt suddenly that somebody was standing just
behind me. The impression was so strong that I turned round hastily and
made a survey of the little room. There was nobody there and I went back
to work again. The feeling returned so often that I repeatedly found
myself turning round in the middle of a sentence, but in an hour at most
I was able to dismiss the fancy for the time. I got to bed too excited
and too tired to sleep, and whilst I was lying there in the dark, the
idea of that fancied presence came back again. It was standing at
my bed-head in the darkness, and though I knew that to be a physical
impossibility because the bed and the wall were close together, I found
myself no longer able to dismiss the image. I went to sleep in spite of
it at last, but at the instant at which I sat down at my table to take
up the thread of last night's work, it was there again. Little by little
it assumed shape and colour in my imagination, until at last it was as
clearly present to me as if I had seen it with my bodily eyes. I have
it before me at this instant; it was the figure of a man in mediaeval
costume, in trunk and hose and doublet, and his clothing was red on one
side and yellow on the other. The face, so far as it could be seen, was
cadaverous and cruel, bu