By Robert Louis Stevenson
The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of
Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his
hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any
human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In
spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and
uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the
impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the
terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against
the season of the holy communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a
sermon on I Pet. V. 8, "The devil as a roaring lion," on the Sunday after every
17th of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both
by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit.
The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually
oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The
manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with
the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish
hilltops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's
ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their
prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads
together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There
was one spot, to be more particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The
manse stood between the highroad and the water of Dule, with a gable to each;
its bank was toward the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of
it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the
road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened
not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the
road on the one hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that
bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among
the young parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister
walked there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his
unspoken prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse door was
locked, the more daring school-boys ventured, with beating hearts, to "follow my
leader" across that legendary spot.
This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of spotless
character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and subject of inquiry
among the few strangers who were led by chance or business into that unknown,
outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the
strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and
among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others
shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm
