DEVELOPMENT OF A

NARRATIVE.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Born 1850. Died 1894.

FROM Kidnapped.

[In Kidnapped and its sequel, David Balfour, Stevenson has furnished excellent material to illustrate the building up of a narrative and the development of the facts to give the necessary consistency and verisimilitude. There are four stages: the title of the story; the rudiments of the story as given on the title page; the summary of the story prefixed to David Balfour, and the story itself, of which Chapter X. will serve as an example.]

I. THE TITLE.

[The past participle Kidnapped is a plot in its purest form. To anyone familiar with the story the word may vividly suggest the detailed events, but in itself Kidnapped does not, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Wrecker, or Treasure Island, in any way indicate character, setting, or purpose.]

2. THE TITLE-PAGE.

KIDNAPPED | BEING | MEMOIRS OF THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR | IN THE YEAR 1751 | How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with ALAN BRECK

STEWART and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, EBENEZER BALFOUR OF SHAWS, falsely so-called: | WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

[Here we find the elements of narration in a very rudimentary form. Several events are named, but in so disjointed and desultory a way that the unified action which we call plot is wanting. Each of the clauses contains the germ of a story, but there is no development. Of characters, David, Alan Breck, and Ebenezer are named; but the names might be interchanged without destroying the sense of the passage, and their relation is hardly indicated. The setting is more noteworthy: the year 1751, six years after Culloden, and the wild Highlands are sufficient to suggest some turbulence; and to be cast away on a desert isle suggests harrowing circumstances. Purpose remains undefined.]

3. THE SUMMARY.'

ALEXANDER AND EBENEZER BALFOUR, brothers of the house of Shaws, near Cramond, in the Forest of Ettrick, being in love with the same lady, and she preferring the elder brother, Alexander, it was agreed between them that Alexander should take the lady 5 and Ebenezer, as amends for his disappointment, the estate of Shaws. Alexander and his wife removed to Essendean, where they lived obscurely-Alexander in the character of village schoolmaster-and where an only son was born to them—namely, David Balfour, 10 the hero of this history. David, brought up in ignorance of the family affairs and his own claim on the

1 From David Balfour. Printed by the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.

estates, and losing both parents before he was eightteen, was left with no other fortune than a sealed letter from his father addressed to his uncle Ebenezer. Proceeding to deliver this, he found Ebenezer living 5 childless and a miser at Shaws, who received him ill, and after vainly endeavoring to compass his death, had him trepanned on board the brig Covenant, Captain Hoseason, bound to Carolina, to the end that he might be sold to labor in the plantations. But early Io in the voyage, the Covenant running through the Minch, struck and sent to the bottom an open boat, from which there saved himself and came on board one Alan Breck Stewart, a Highland gentleman banished in the '45, and now engaged in smuggling 15 rents from his clansmen, the Appin Stewarts, to their chief Ardshiel, living in exile in France. Hoseason and his crew, learning that Alan had gold about him, conspired to rob and murder him; but David, being made privy to the plot, put Alan on his guard and 20 promised to stand by him. Favored by the shelter of the round-house, and by Alan's courage and skill of fence, the two got the better of their assailants in the attack which followed, killing or maiming more than half of them; whereby Captain Hoseason was disabled. 25 from prosecuting his voyage, and came to terms with

Alan, agreeing to land him on a part of the coast whence he might best make his way to his own country of Appin. But in attempting this the Covenant took ground and sank off the coast of Mull. Those on 30 board saved themselves as best they could-David separately, being first cast on the Isle of Earraid, and thence making his way across Mull, where he learned

that an had passed before, leaving word that David should follow and rejoin him in his own country at the house of his kinsman, James Stewart of the Glens. On his way to keep this tryst, David found himself in Appin on the same day when the King's Factor, Colin 5 Roy Campbell, of Glenure, came with a force of redcoats to drive out the tenants from the forfeited estates of Ardshiel, and was present when Glenure was slain upon the roadside by a shot out of a neighboring wood. Suspected of complicity at the moment when he was 10 in the act of giving chase to the unknown murderer, David betook himself to flight, and was quickly joined by Alan Breck, who, though he had not fired the shot, was lurking not far off. The two now lived the life of hunted men upon the moors, the outcry on account of 15 the murder being very great, and its guilt being declared to rest on James Stewart of the Glens, the already outlawed Alan Breck, and a lad unknown— being no other than David Balfour, for whose apprehension blood-money was offered and the country 20 scoured by soldiery. At last, after many and hard adventures, David and Alan made their way by Balquhidder down to the Highland Line and the Forth; which, however, they dared not cross for fear of arrest, until an innkeeper's daughter, Alison Hastie, was pre- 25 vailed on to row them over to the Lothian shore under cover of night. Here, Alan again going into hiding, David declared himself to Mr. Rankeillor, of Queensferry, lawyer and lately agent to the Shaws estate, who promptly took up his cause and contrived a plan 30 whereby, with the help of Alan, Ebenezer Balfour was compelled to recognize his nephew's title as heir to