It was early in the month of June,1751, when I shut the door of our house behind me for the last time. All my life I had lived in the quiet little village of Essendean, in the Lowlands of Scotland, where my father had been the dominie, or schoolteacher. But now that he and my mother were both dead, I had to leave the house. The new dominie would soon arrive, and he would teach at the school and live in the dominie's house. So, although I was only seventeen, there was nowhere for me to live, and no reason for me to stay in Essendean.

But my heart was beating with excitement as I walked down the road, because in my hand I carried the letter that my father had given me just before he died. "Davie," he had said, "when I am dead, take this to the house of Shaws, near Cramond. That's where I came from, and that's where you must go. Put this letter into the hands of Ebenezer Balfour."

Balfour! The same name as my own! It was the first time I had heard of any of our family outside Essendean.

So I decided to walk to Cramond, hoping that perhaps this Mr Balfour, in his fine big house, would receive me kindly, and help me to become a rich man one day. With my plaid over my shoulder, I walked fast up the hill away from the village. What an adventure, to leave that sleepy place, where nothing ever happened, and go to a great, busy house, to be with rich and important people of my own name and blood! But when I reached the top of the hill, I turned a little sadly, to take my last look at the dominie's house, and Essendean churchyard, where my father and mother lay.

My journey northwards took almost two days. By midday on the second day I could see the smoking chimneys of Edinburgh in front of me, and soon I arrived in Cramond.

Now I began to ask people on the road for the house of Shaws. Their answers worried me a little. Some people seemed surprised, some afraid, and some angry, when I spoke the name of Ebenezer Balfour. I could not understand this, but it was too far to go back to Essendean that day, and I wanted to find the rest of the Balfour family very much So I continued on my way, and when I met a dark, wild-looking woman coming towards me, I asked her where the house of Shaws was She took me to the top of the next hill, and showed me a large building standing alone in the bottom of the next valley. Although the fields around were green, and the farmland was excellent, the house itself looked unfinished and empty. Part of its roof was missing. There was no road to it, and no smoke coming from any of its chimneys, nor was there any garden.

"That!" I cried. "No, it can't be!"

"It is!" cried the woman angrily. "That is the house of Shaws! Blood built it, blood stopped the building of it, and blood shall bring it down! Black is the heart of Ebenezer Balfour! You can tell him from me that I hope to see him die, and his house fall down around him!"

The woman turned and disappeared. I stood where she left me, shaking like a leaf, and looking down at the house for a long time. But when it began to get dark, I noticed some smoke coming out of the chimney, and felt a little more hopeful. "There must be a fire, and cooking, and people in the house," I thought. So I walked up to the front door. The house seemed locked up and unwelcoming, but there was fire light shining through the kitchen window, and I could hear someone talking quietly to himself. Bravely, I lifted my hand and knocked loudly on the strong wooden door. The house was suddenly silent, and there was no reply. I knocked and knocked, and shouted as loudly as I could. Finally, the window opened, and a man holding a gun put his head out.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I've come here with a letter for Mr Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws. Is he here?"

"Who is it from?" asked the man with the gun.

"That's none of your business," I replied, getting angry.

"Well, put the letter down by the door, and leave."

"I will not!" I answered sharply. "I'm going to give it to Mr Balfour himself. The letter introduces me to him."

"Who are you then?" was the next question.

"I'm not ashamed of my name. It's David Balfour."

The man almost dropped his gun. After a long while, he asked in a changed voice, "Is your father dead?" I was too surprised to answer, but he continued, "Aye, he must be dead, and that's why you have come. Well, man, I'll let you in," and he disappeared from the window.

Now the door was unlocked, and a voice from the darkness said, "Go into the kitchen and touch nothing." I obeyed, while the man locked the heavy door carefully again. I found myself in the emptiest kitchen that I had ever seen. There was a fire, but no other light. On the table was a bowl of porridge and a glass of water, in front of the only chair. Around the walls were several locked chests. There was no other furniture. The man who now appeared in the kitchen was small, mean-looking and white-faced, between fifty and seventy years old, and wearing a dirty old nightshirt. The worst thing about him was that he could neither take his eyes away from me, nor look straight into my face.

"If you're hungry," he said, "you can eat that porridge. It's grand food, porridge! Let me see the letter!"

"It's for Mr Balfour, not you," I replied.

"And who do you think I am? Give me Alexander's letter! You may not like me or my house or my porridge, but I'm your born uncle, Davie, my man!"

This was the end of all my hopes. I was too tired and miser able to speak, so I silently gave him the letter, and sat down to eat the porridge.

"Your father's been dead a long time?" he asked, giving me a quick look from his sharp eyes.

"Three weeks, sir," I said.

"He was a secretive man, Alexander was. Perhaps he didn't talk much about me? Or about the house of Shaws?"

"I never knew he had a brother, sir, or ever heard the name of Shaws."

"To think of that!" he replied. "A strange man!" But he seemed very pleased, and began to look at me with more inter est. Soon he jumped up and said, "We're going to get on well, Davie! What's mine is yours, man, and what's yours is mine. Blood's thicker than water, and there's only you and me of the name of Balfour. Now I'll show you to your bed."

He took me up some dark stairs and showed me into a room. I could not see anything.

"Can I have a light, sir?" I asked.

"No, you can't. No lights in this house! I'm afraid of fires, you see. Good night to you, Davie, my man." And before I had time to reply, he pulled the door shut and locked it from the outside. The room was very cold, but luckily I had my plaid with me, so I covered myself with it like a blanket, and soon fell asleep.

The next day my uncle and I had a small bowl of porridge and a glass of water for breakfast, lunch and supper. He did not speak much to me, but was clearly thinking hard. I often noticed him looking at me, while pretending to do something different, and he never left me alone in the kitchen with the locked chests, in which, I supposed, he kept his money. I did not like the way he looked at me, and began to wonder if he was a little crazy, and perhaps dangerous.

After supper he said suddenly,"Davie, I've been thinking. I promised your father a bit of money for you before you were born. A promise is a promise -- and so I'm going to give you… forty pounds!" These last words seemed very painful to him. He added, in a kind of scream, "Scots!"

A Scottish pound was the same as an English shilling. I could see that his story was a lie, so I laughed at him, saying, "Oh, think again, sir! English pounds, surely!"

"That's what I said," replied my uncle quickly. "Go outside for a moment, and I'll get the money for you."

I was smiling as I went out, sure that he would give me nothing at all. It was a dark night, and I could hear wind in the hills. "There may be thunder later," I thought, not knowing how important the weather would be to me that night.

But when my uncle called me in again, he counted thirty eight English pounds in gold into my hands. It clearly hurt him to do it, and he kept back the last two pounds, but I did not mind that. Surprised and pleased, I thanked him warmly.

"Now," he said, looking cleverly at me, "you can give me something, Davie. I'm getting old now, and I need help."

"Of course, sir," I answered. "What can I do?"

"Well, go outside and climb the stairs at the other end of the house, where the building isn't finished yet. Go up to the room at the top, and bring down the chest that you'll find there. It's got valuable papers in it."

"Can I have a light, sir?" I asked.

"No," he said sharply. "No lights in my house!"

"Very well, sir. Are the stairs good?"

"They're grand," said he.

The stairs are grand. Out I went into the night. As I was feeling my way along the outside wall, there was a sudden flash of lightning, then darkness again. I found the stairs and started climbing. I was about fifteen metres above the ground, when there was another flash of lightning. That was lucky for me, because it showed me that the steps were uneven, and that I could easily fall to my death. "These are the grand stairs!" I thought. "Perhaps my uncle wants me to die!" Now I was very careful, and I felt each step with my hands before I put my foot on it. A few steps later my hand felt cold stone, and then nothing more. The stairs ended there, twenty metres above the ground. I felt cold with fear, when I thought of the danger that I had been in. Sending a stranger up those stairs in the dark was sending him straight to his death.

Angrily, I turned and felt my way down. There was a crash of thunder, and suddenly the rain came down. At the bottom of the stairs I looked towards the kitchen, and could see, in the next flash of lightning, a figure standing still in the doorway, listening. When the thunder sounded again, louder than before, he ran back inside, and I followed as softly as I could. I found him sitting in the kitchen, drinking whisky straight from the bottle, and shaking with fear. Quietly I came up behind him, and, putting my hands suddenly on his shoulders, cried, "Ah!"

My uncle gave a kind of broken cry, and fell to the floor like a dead man. His face was a strange blue colour, and I began to think that he really was dead.

At last his eyes opened, and he looked up and saw me. "Oh man, are you alive or a ghost?" he cried "Get me my medicine, Davie -- it's for my heart." I found the medicine bottle and gave him some. He soon began to look a little better. "Why did you lie to me?" I asked angrily.

"Why did you give me money? And why did you try to kill me? Answer me!"

"I'll tell you tomorrow, Davie, I promise. Help me to bed now, will you?" He still looked very ill, so I could not refuse. But this time I locked his bedroom door, and went to sleep in front of the kitchen fire.

When I woke up in the morning, I felt very pleased with myself. "He thinks he's cleverer than me, but he isn't!" I thought. When I let my uncle out of his room, I asked him again for an explanation After a while, he said, "Davie, I have some business with a ship's captain at Queensferry. Now, we could walk over there, and when I've done my business, we could visit the lawyer, Mr Rankeillor. He'll answer all your questions. He's an honest man, and he knew your father. What do you say to that?"

I thought for a moment. I had never seen the sea, but had always wanted to! "It's a grand idea," I said.

It was a morning's walk to Queensferry, Which was west of Edinburgh, but we did not say a word to each other on the way. Suddenly, at the top of a hill, we could see the Firth of Forth below us, blue and calm, with white sails on it.

"You see that public house?" asked my uncle. "Captain Hoseason's there, to do business with me. There's the ship's boat on the beach, waiting to take him to the ship. And there's the ship itself! A grand ship!"

I had to agree with him. The sailors were getting the ship ready for sailing, and I thought what an exciting adventure that would be -- to sail away to a foreign country.

We walked down the hill to the public house and met the captain there. He was a tall, dark, serious-looking man, who shook hands politely with me. Stupidly, I left these two men to their business, and ran down to the beach, to talk to the sailors and look at the boats. It was all new and very interest ing to me.

As I was coming back, I met the owner of the public house.

"Good morning," he said. "Did you come with Ebenezer?"

"I did," I replied. "He isn't well liked, I understand."

"That's true," he answered. "Nobody speaks well of him. It all started with that story about Mr Alexander, his brother."

"What story?" I asked.

"Oh, just that Ebenezer had killed him. Did you never hear that?"

"And why would he kill my f --, I mean, Alexander?"

"To get the house, of course, the house of Shaws."

"Aye, man? Was my -- was Alexander older than Ebenezer?"

"Indeed he was! No other reason for killing him!"

This was a great surprise to me! I had thought that my father was the younger brother, and I now understood why my uncle had lied to me, and wanted to kill me. The house of Shaws had belonged to my father, not my uncle, and now I had inherited it. The poor country boy who had walked from Essendean was the owner of a fine house and farmland! My head was full of the wonderful things that I could do in my life, as I looked, unseeing, at the sea.

Just then my uncle and the captain came out of the public house. The captain smiled in a friendly way as he spoke to me. "Sir," he said, "Mr Balfour has told me a lot about you. I'm only sorry I haven't time to get to know you better. But I'd like you to come on to my ship for half an hour, before we sail, and have a drink with me."

Now, more than anything in the world, I wanted to see the inside of a ship, but I remembered that I had to be careful. "My uncle and I have to see the lawyer, sir," I replied, "so I'm afraid we may not have enough time."

"Aye, aye," he answered, "I know, but you see, the ship's boat can put you both down near Rankeillor's house, after you've seen the ship, so you won't lose any time. " Suddenly he said quietly in my ear, "Watch out for the old man -- he wants to hurt you. Come and talk about it." Putting his arm in mine, he said loudly, "What can I bring you back from my travels? A friend of Mr Balfour's is a friend of mine!"

By this time we were on the beach, and he was helping my uncle and me into the boat. I thought that I had found a good friend and helper, and I was very excited as we came closer to the great ship, full of busy, noisy sailors. The captain and I were the first to climb up the ship's side, and at the top the captain immediately put his arm through mine and began to talk about the ship.

"But where is my uncle?" I asked suddenly. I pulled myself away from the captain's arm, and ran to the side of the ship. Sure enough, there was the boat returning to Queensferry, with my uncle sitting in it. I screamed, "Help, help! Murder!" and my uncle slowly turned to look at me.

I did not see any more. Already strong hands were pulling me away. Then something hit my head; I saw a great flash of fire, and fell to the ground.