“Well, I suppose you have read the Green Shutters by this time. 'Tis a brutal and bloody work; too sinister, I should think, for a man of your kindlier disposition. There is too much black for the white in it. Even so, it is more complimentary to Scotland, I think, than the sentimental slop of Barrie and Crockett, and Maclaren. It was antagonism to their method that made me embitter the blackness; like old Gourlay I was "going to show the dogs what I thought of them." Which was a gross blunder, of course.”