Leaving forgotten _Grace Forbeach_ out of the reckoning, _Joseph's Coat_ was my third novel in the order of writing and the second in order of publication. The second half of _A Life's Atonement_ was written under difficulties which would have been absolutely insurmountable if it had not been for that spirit of camaraderie which distinguished the jolly little Bohemian set amongst whom I had fallen. One chum who lived over an undertaker's shop in Great Russell Street found me house-room, and I had a resource from which, for the space of some ten weeks, I was entitled to draw one pound a week, which came to me in rather an odd fashion. Every morning a half-crown was slipped under the doormat, except on Saturdays, when three were left there, one for the needs of the day and a double allowance for the Sunday. A loaf and a tin of Chicago beef stocked the larder, and that being once attended to, the remnant of my income served for such necessaries of life as beer and tobacco, and pen and ink and paper. The bargain I had made with Messrs Chambers was that I should receive one-half payment for the book--one hundred and twenty-five pounds--on delivery and acceptance, and the other half on the conclusion of the serial publication of the story in their journal. This left an interval of twelve months between the two payments, and the first was all but exhausted when my second commission from the firm reached me. It was then drawing towards the close of the year, and Mr Robert Chambers wrote me to say that the writer with whom he had bargained to follow _A Life's Atonement_ had broken down in health, and asking if I were in a position to supply her place. I went off post-haste to Edinburgh and saw him there, and it was arranged between us that I should deliver to him six chapters of an original novel per week, that I should remain in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh in order to give him opportunity for consultation from time to time, and that whilst the book was being written I should receive a living wage. He recommended me to locate myself in Portobello, and there in the dead season I had no difficulty in finding lodgings.
I had scarcely deposited my portmanteau when I set to work. I began to write without the faintest idea of a plan, and for the first day or two I swam boldly enough along the stream of chance. The first chapters pleased Robert Chambers greatly and he was wise and generous enough to say so. For six tremendous weeks I wrote, beginning punctually every morning at eight o'clock and pretty generally bringing the day's work to a finish in the neighbourhood of midnight. I gave myself two half-hours for exercise and rambled in all sorts of weather about the sands and the deserted promenade. I was approaching the end of the work when a very curious experience befell me. I was sitting towards the end of the day's labour at my table when I felt suddenly that somebody was standing just behind me. The impression was so strong that I turned round hastily and made a survey of the little room. There was nobody there and I went back to work again. The feeling returned so often that I repeatedly found myself turning round in the middle of a sentence, but in an hour at most I was able to dismiss the fancy for the time. I got to bed too excited and too tired to sleep, and whilst I was lying there in the dark, the idea of that fancied presence came back again. It was standing at my bed-head in the darkness, and though I knew that to be a physical impossibility because the bed and the wall were close together, I found myself no longer able to dismiss the image. I went to sleep in spite of it at last, but at the instant at which I sat down at my table to take up the thread of last night's work, it was there again. Little by little it assumed shape and colour in my imagination, until at last it was as clearly present to me as if I had seen it with my bodily eyes. I have it before me at this instant; it was the figure of a man in mediaeval costume, in trunk and hose and doublet, and his clothing was red on one side and yellow on the other. The face, so far as it could be seen, was cadaverous and cruel, but half of it was concealed by a black vizor of velvet, through which lamped a pair of dark, unwinking eyes. The figure was there all day and every minute of the day, but I pegged stolidly on and gave as little heed as I could to it. But that night when I had got to bed, a development occurred. The figure took up that impossible position at my head, and I became aware that it had, balanced over its shoulder, an axe with a broad back and an edge like a razor, with which it stood in act to strike.