He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and I began
to read them. I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world I did
not understand, and many of them I could not endure. But I persevered,
and studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in time I began to
feel as if perhaps they were true. My chief weariness with them came
from the way they had of referring to the things I was so intimate with
as though they were only the unauthenticated history of a life so
long passed by that it could no longer matter to any one. So often the
greatest hours of great lives were treated as possible legends. I
knew why men had died or were killed or had borne black horror. I knew
because I had read old books and manuscripts and had heard the stories
which had come down through centuries by word of mouth, passed from
father to son.

But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the world had
begun and would end with him. He knew he was only one, and part of
all the rest. The name I shall give him is Hector MacNairn. He was a
Scotchman, but he had lived in many a land. The first time I read a book
he had written I caught my breath with joy, again and again. I knew I
had found a friend, even though there was no likelihood that I should
ever see his face. He was a great and famous writer, and all the world
honored him; while I, hidden away in my castle on a rock on the edge of
Muircarrie, was so far from being interesting or clever that even in my
grandest evening dress and tiara of jewels I was as insignificant as a
mouse. In fact, I always felt rather silly when I was obliged to wear my
diamonds on state occasions as custom sometimes demanded.

Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and marvelous stories which were
always real though they were called fiction. Wheresoever his story was