The Man from Archangel - Page 2

legal action taken in the matter, but the papers
yelped at me, and folk looked askance when I met them. It ended by
my cursing them and their vile, smoke-polluted town, and hurrying
to my northern possession, where I might at last find peace and an
opportunity for solitary study and contemplation. I borrowed from
my capital before I went, and so was able to take with me a choice
collection of the most modern philosophical instruments and books,
together with chemicals and such other things as I might need in my
retirement.

The land which I had inherited was a narrow strip, consisting
mostly of sand, and extending for rather over two miles round the
coast of Mansie Bay, in Caithness. Upon this strip there had been
a rambling, grey-stone building--when erected or wherefore none
could tell me--and this I had repaired, so that it made a dwelling
quite good enough for one of my simple tastes. One room was my
laboratory, another my sitting-room, and in a third, just under the
sloping roof, I slung the hammock in which I always slept. There
were three other rooms, but I left them vacant, except one which
was given over to the old crone who kept house for me. Save the
Youngs and the M'Leods, who were fisher-folk living round at the
other side of Fergus Ness, there were no other people for many
miles in each direction. In front of the house was the great bay,
behind it were two long barren hills, capped by other loftier ones
beyond. There was a glen between the hills, and when the wind
was from the land it used to sweep down this with a melancholy
sough and whisper among the branches of the fir-trees beneath my
attic window.

I dislike my fellow-mortals. Justice compels me to add that they
appear for the most part to dislike me. I hate their little
crawling ways, their conventionalities, their deceits, their narrow
rights and wrongs. They take offence at my brusque outspokenness,
my disregard for their social laws, my impatience of all
constraint. Among my books and my drugs in my lonely den at Mansie
I could let the great drove of the human race pass onwards with
their politics and inventions and tittle-tattle, and I remained
behind stagnant and happy. Not stagnant either, for I was working
in my own little groove, and making progress. I have reason to
believe that Dalton's atomic theory is founded upon error, and I
know that mercury is not an element.

During the day I was busy with my distillations and analyses.
Often I forgot my meals, and when old Madge summoned me to my tea
I found my dinner lying untouched upon the table. At night I read
Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant--all those who have pried into what
is unknowable. They are all fruitless and empty, barren of result,
but