To one more tradition I may allude, that we are somehow descended
from a French barber-surgeon who came to St. Andrews in the service
of one of the Cardinal Beatons. No details were added. But the
very name of France was so detested in my family for three
generations, that I am tempted to suppose there may be something in
it. {12a}



CHAPTER I: DOMESTIC ANNALS



It is believed that in 1665, James Stevenson in Nether Carsewell,
parish of Neilston, county of Renfrew, and presumably a tenant
farmer, married one Jean Keir; and in 1675, without doubt, there
was born to these two a son Robert, possibly a maltster in Glasgow.
In 1710, Robert married, for a second time, Elizabeth Cumming, and
there was born to them, in 1720, another Robert, certainly a
maltster in Glasgow. In 1742, Robert the second married Margaret
Fulton (Margret, she called herself), by whom he had ten children,
among whom were Hugh, born February 1749, and Alan, born June 1752.

With these two brothers my story begins. Their deaths were
simultaneous; their lives unusually brief and full. Tradition
whispered me in childhood they were the owners of an islet near St.
Kitts; and it is certain they had risen to be at the head of
considerable interests in the West Indies, which Hugh managed
abroad and Alan at home, at an age when others are still curveting