The King’s Horn. The Actor’s Wife. The Wreck of the _Susanna_. This is the new work on which I am engaged with Fanny; they are all supernatural. ‘Thrawn Janet’ is off to Stephen, but as it is all in Scotch he cannot take it, I know. It was _so good_, I could not help sending it. My health improves. We have a lovely spot here: a little green glen with a burn, a wonderful burn, gold and green and snow-white, singing loud and low in different steps of its career, now pouring over miniature crags, now fretting itself to death in a maze of rocky stairs and pots; never was so sweet a little river. Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to Ben Vrackie. Hunger lives here, alone with larks and sheep. Sweet spot, sweet spot. Write me a word about Bob’s professoriate and Landor, and what you think of _The Black Man_. The tales are all ghastly. ‘Thrawn Janet’ frightened me to death. There will maybe be another—‘The Dead Man’s A Letter.’ I believe I shall recover; and I am, in this blessed hope, yours exuberantly, R. L. S. TO PROFESSOR ÆNEAS MACKAY _Kinnaird Cottage_, _Pitlochry_, _Wednesday_, _June_ 21, 1881. MY DEAR MACKAY,—What is this I hear?—that you are retiring from your chair. It is not, I hope, from ill-health? But if you are retiring, may I ask if you have promised your support to any successor? I have a great mind to try. The summer session would suit me; the chair would suit me—if only I would suit it; I certainly should work it hard: that I can promise. I only wish it were a few years from now, when I hope to have something more substantial to show for myself. Up to the present time, all that I have published, even bordering on history, has been in an occasional form, and I fear this is much against me. Please let me hear a word in answer, and believe me, yours very sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO PROFESSOR ÆNEAS MACKAY _Kinnaird Cottage_, _Pitlochry_, _Perthshire_ [_June_ 1881]. MY DEAR MACKAY,—Thank you very much for your kind letter, and still more for your good opinion. You are not the only one who has regretted my absence from your lectures; but you were to me, then, only a part of a mangle through which I was being slowly and unwillingly dragged—part of a course which I had not chosen—part, in a word, of an organised boredom. I am glad to have your reasons for giving up the chair; they are partly pleasant, and partly honourable to you. And I think one may say that every man who publicly declines a plurality of offices, makes it perceptibly more difficult for the next man to accept them.