This is for—I am quite wrong to tell you—for you will tell others—and nothing will teach you that all my schemes are in the air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the clouds—it is for _Heathercat_: whereof the first volume will be called _The Killing Time_, and I believe I have authorities ample for that. But the second volume is to be called (I believe) _Darien_, and for that I want, I fear, a good deal of truck:— _Darien Papers_, _Carstairs Papers_, _Marchmont Papers_, _Jerviswoode Correspondence_, I hope may do me. Some sort of general history of the Darien affair (if there is a decent one, which I misdoubt), it would also be well to have—the one with most details, if possible. It is singular how obscure to me this decade of Scots history remains, 1690–1700—a deuce of a want of light and grouping to it! However, I believe I shall be mostly out of Scotland in my tale; first in Carolina, next in Darien. I want also—I am the daughter of the horse-leech truly—‘Black’s new large map of Scotland,’ sheets 3, 4, and 5, a 7s. 6d. touch. I believe, if you can get the _Caldwell Papers_, they had better come also; and if there be any reasonable work—but no, I must call a halt. . . . I fear the song looks doubtful, but I’ll consider of it, and I can promise you some reminiscences which it will amuse me to write, whether or not it will amuse the public to read of them. But it’s an unco business to _supply_ deid-heid coapy. TO J. M. BARRIE _Vailima_, _Samoa_, _December_ 7_th_, 1893. MY DEAR BARRIE,—I have received duly the _magnum opus_, and it really is a _magnum opus_. {311} It is a beautiful specimen of Clark’s printing, paper sufficient, and the illustrations all my fancy painted. But the particular flower of the flock to whom I have hopelessly lost my heart is Tibby Birse. I must have known Tibby Birse when she was a servant’s mantua-maker in Edinburgh and answered to the name of Miss _Broddie_. She used to come and sew with my nurse, sitting with her legs crossed in a masculine manner; and swinging her foot emphatically, she used to pour forth a perfectly unbroken stream of gossip. I didn’t hear it, I was immersed in far more important business with a box of bricks, but the recollection of that thin, perpetual, shrill sound of a voice has echoed in my ears sinsyne. I am bound to say she was younger than Tibbie, but there is no mistaking that and the indescribable and eminently Scottish expression.