_Thrawn Janet_ which, with most of the tales in _The Merry Men_, was written at Pitlochry, appeared in _Cornhill_ in 1880. Mr Stevenson himself considered it one of his best stories, and thought it an excellent piece of dialect writing. It is weird and impressive in the extreme, and no one who has read it is likely to forget the minister of Balweary in the vale of Dull, and his terrible experiences in the matter of a housekeeper; the 'het lowin' wind' and the coppery sky of that day on which he met the black man coming down by Dull water, and knew that he had spoken with the enemy of souls himself; or the awful storm, in which Satan finally came for all that was left of Thrawn Janet. Into this story of a few pages are condensed a power of forcible expression and a weirdness of theme which have not been surpassed in any of the larger books.
_The Merry Men_ is a story of wreck and wickedness on a desolate West Highland island where the rocks called 'the Merry Men,' as the tides boil and foam among them, make, as it were, an undercurrent of mad laughter that forms a fitting accompaniment to the hideous passions of greed and murder and the dead level of human misery that are the prevailing atmosphere of the tale. It is one of the best of the stories forming the volume, to which it gives its name, published by Messrs Chatto & Windus in 1887.
In another collection of short tales Mr Stevenson also deals with the seamy side of life, and _The New Arabian Nights_ published in 1882, and which contains the reprint of such stories as _The Suicide Club_, _The Rajah's Diamond_, _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_, and _The Pavilion on the Links_, is quite as gruesome and by no means less interesting than _The Merry Men_.
_The Sire de Maletroit's Door_ and _The Pavilion on the Links_, are most graphically written, especially the latter with its splendid description of the dreary sea and the wide and wind-swept stretch of drearier links where the curious characters play their mysterious parts. It is interesting to know that Mr Stevenson wrote _The Pavilion on the Links_ while he was very ill in California. All the stories in the two volumes are favourites, and many readers give a preference to _The Suicide Club_, _The Rajah's Diamond_, or _Prince Florizel_.