The splendid part to think of is that no hint of his dark days and pains crept into his writings or saddened those who came to see him.  Complaint he kept to himself, prayed that he might “continue to be eager to be happy,” lived with the best that was in him from day to day, and the words that went forth from his sick-room have cheered and encouraged thousands.

When asked why he wrote so many stories of pirates and adventurers with few women to soften them he replied:  “I suppose it’s the contrast; I have always admired great strength, even in a pirate.  Courage has interested me more than anything else.”

He and his stepson had grown to be great chums.  At Silverado Lloyd had been seized with a desire to write stories and had set up a toy printing-press which turned off several tales.  At Davos Platz they both tried their hand at illustrating these stories with pictures cut on wood-blocks and gayly colored.  Lloyd’s room was quite a gallery of these artistic attempts.  But their favorite diversion was to play at a war game with lead soldiers.  In after-years Lloyd wrote his recollections of the days they spent together enjoying this fun and he says:  “The war game was constantly improved and elaborated, until from a few hours, a war took weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic monopolized half our thoughts.  This attic was a most chilly and dismal spot, reached by a crazy ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted window; so low at the eaves and so dark that we could seldom stand upright, nor see without a candle.  Upon the attic floor a map was roughly drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads of two classes.  Here we would play by the hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an intentness, zest, and excitement that I shall never forget.

“The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed by measured evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in front and massed support behind, in the most approved military fashion of to-day.”

Neither of them ever grew too old for this sport.  Year after year they went back to the game.  Even when they went to Samoa they laid out a campaign room with maps chalked on the floor.

In the spring of 1885 Thomas Stevenson purchased a house at Bournemouth, England, near London, as a present for his daughter-in-law.

They named the cottage “Skerryvore,” after the famous lighthouse he had helped to build in his young days, and it was their home for the next three years—­busy ones for R.L.S.

[Illustration:  Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth]

It was a real joy to have his father and mother and Bob Stevenson with them again and his friends in London frequently drop in for a visit.

His health was never worse than during the Bournemouth days.  He seldom went beyond his own garden-gate but lived, as he says, “like a weevil in a biscuit.”  Yet he never worked harder or accomplished more.  He wrote in bed and out of bed, sick or well, poems, plays, short stories, and verses.