For some time Shargar did not utter a word; and Robert, although somewhat indignant at the treatment he was receiving, felt as yet no impulse to interfere, for success was doubtful. But, indeed, he was not very easily roused to action of any kind; for he was as yet mostly in the larva-condition of character, when everything is transacted inside. But the fun grew more furious, and spot after spot of ink gloomed upon Shargar's white face. Still Robert took no notice, for they did not seem to be hurting him much. But when he saw the tears stealing down his patient cheeks, making channels through the ink which now nearly covered them, he could bear it no longer. He took out his knife, and under pretence of joining in the sport, drew near to Shargar, and with rapid hand cut the cords—all but those that bound his feet, which were less easy to reach without exposing himself defenceless.

The boys of course turned upon Robert. But ere they came to more than abusive words a diversion took place.

Mrs. Innes, the school-master's wife—a stout, kind-hearted woman, the fine condition of whose temperament was clearly the result of her physical prosperity—appeared at the door which led to the dwelling-house above, bearing in her hands a huge tureen of potato-soup, for her motherly heart could not longer endure the thought of dinnerless boys. Her husband being engaged at a parish meeting, she had a chance of interfering with success.

But ere Nancy, the servant, could follow with the spoons and plates, Wattie Morrison had taken the tureen, and out of spite at Robert, had emptied its contents on the head of Shargar, who was still tied by the feet, with the words: 'Shargar, I anoint thee king over us, and here is thy crown,' giving the tureen, as he said so, a push on to his head, where it remained.

Shargar did not move, and for one moment could not speak, but the next he gave a shriek that made Robert think he was far worse scalded than turned out to be the case. He darted to him in rage, took the tureen from his head, and, his blood being fairly up now, flung it with all his force at Morrison, and felled him to the earth. At the same moment the master entered by the street door and his wife by the house door, which was directly opposite. In the middle of the room the prisoners surrounded the fallen tyrant—Robert, with the red face of wrath, and Shargar, with a complexion the mingled result of tears, ink, and soup, which latter clothed him from head to foot besides, standing on the outskirts of the group. I need not follow the story farther. Both Robert and Morrison got a lickin'; and if Mr. Innes had been like some school-masters of those times, Shargar would not have escaped his share of the evil things going.

From that day Robert assumed the acknowledged position of Shargar's defender. And if there was pride and a sense of propriety mingled with his advocacy of Shargar's rights, nay, even if the relation was not altogether free from some amount of show-off on Robert's part, I cannot yet help thinking that it had its share in that development of the character of Falconer which has chiefly attracted me to the office of his biographer. There may have been in it the exercise of some patronage; probably it was not pure from the pride of beneficence; but at least it was a loving patronage and a vigorous beneficence; and, under the reaction of these, the good which in Robert's nature was as yet only in a state of solution, began to crystallize into character.

But the effect of the new relation was far more remarkable on Shargar. As incapable of self-defence as ever, he was yet in a moment roused to fury by any attack upon the person or the dignity of Robert: so that, indeed, it became a new and favourite mode of teasing Shargar to heap abuse, real or pretended, upon his friend. From the day when Robert thus espoused his part, Shargar was Robert's dog. That very evening, when she went to take a parting peep at the external before locking the door for the night, Betty found him sitting upon the door-step, only, however, to send him off, as she described it, 'wi' a flech [1] in 's lug (a flea in his ear).' For the character of the mother was always associated with the boy, and avenged upon him. I must, however, allow that those delicate, dirty fingers of his could not with safety be warranted from occasional picking and stealing.

At this period of my story, Robert himself was rather a grotesque-looking animal, very tall and lanky, with especially long arms, which excess of length they retained after he was full-grown. In this respect Shargar and he were alike; but the long legs of Shargar were unmatched in Robert, for at this time his body was peculiarly long. He had large black eyes, deep sunk even then, and a Roman nose, the size of which in a boy of his years looked portentous. For the rest, he was dark-complexioned, with dark hair, destined to grow darker still, with hands and feet well modelled, but which would have made four feet and four hands such as Shargar's.

When his mind was not oppressed with the consideration of any important metaphysical question, he learned his lessons well; when such was present, the Latin grammar, with all its attendant servilities, was driven from the presence of the lordly need. That once satisfied in spite of pandies and imprisonments, he returned with fresh zest, and, indeed, with some ephemeral ardour, to the rules of syntax or prosody, though the latter, in the mode in which it was then and there taught, was almost as useless as the task set himself by a worthy lay-preacher in the neighbourhood—of learning the first nine chapters of the first Book of the Chronicles, in atonement for having, in an evil hour of freedom of spirit, ventured to suggest that such lists of names, even although forming a portion of Holy Writ, could scarcely be reckoned of equally divine authority with St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.



CHAPTER VIII. THE ANGEL UNAWARES.

Although Betty seemed to hold little communication with the outer world, she yet contrived somehow or other to bring home what gossip was going to the ears of her mistress, who had very few visitors; for, while her neighbours held Mrs. Falconer in great and evident respect, she was not the sort of person to sit down and have a news with. There was a certain sedate self-contained dignity about her which the common mind felt to be chilling and repellant; and from any gossip of a personal nature—what Betty brought her always excepted—she would turn away, generally with the words, 'Hoots! I canna bide clashes.'

On the evening following that of Shargar's introduction to Mrs. Falconer's house, Betty came home from the butcher's—for it was Saturday night, and she had gone to fetch the beef for their Sunday's broth—with the news that the people next door, that is, round the corner in the next street, had a visitor.

The house in question had been built by Robert's father, and was, compared with Mrs. Falconer's one-storey house, large and handsome. Robert had been born, and had spent a few years of his life in it, but could recall nothing of the facts of those early days. Some time before the period at which my history commences it had passed into other hands, and it was now quite strange to him. It had been bought by a retired naval officer, who lived in it with his wife—the only Englishwoman in the place, until the arrival, at The Boar's Head, of the lady so much admired by Dooble Sanny.

Robert was up-stairs when Betty emptied her news-bag, and so heard nothing of this bit of gossip. He had just assured Shargar that as soon as his grandmother was asleep he would look about for what he could find, and carry it up to him in the garret. As yet he had confined the expenditure out of Shargar's shilling to twopence.

The household always retired early—earlier on Saturday night in preparation for the Sabbath—and by ten o'clock grannie and Betty were in bed. Robert, indeed, was in bed too; but he had lain down in his clothes, waiting for such time as might afford reasonable hope of his grandmother being asleep, when he might both ease Shargar's hunger and get to sleep himself. Several times he got up, resolved to make his attempt; but as often his courage failed and he lay down again, sure that grannie could not be asleep yet. When the clock beside him struck eleven, he could bear it no longer, and finally rose to do his endeavour.

Opening the door of the closet slowly and softly, he crept upon his hands and knees into the middle of the parlour, feeling very much like a thief, as, indeed, in a measure he was, though from a blameless motive. But just as he had accomplished half the distance to the door, he was arrested and fixed with terror; for a deep sigh came from grannie's bed, followed by the voice of words. He thought at first that she had heard him, but he soon found that he was mistaken. Still, the fear of discovery held him there on all fours, like a chained animal. A dull red gleam, faint and dull, from the embers of the fire, was the sole light in the room. Everything so common to his eyes in the daylight seemed now strange and eerie in the dying coals, and at what was to the boy the unearthly hour of the night.

He felt that he ought not to listen to grannie, but terror made him unable to move.

'Och hone! och hone!' said grannie from the bed. 'I've a sair, sair hert. I've a sair hert i' my breist, O Lord! thoo knowest. My ain Anerew! To think o' my bairnie that I cairriet i' my ain body, that sookit my breists, and leuch i' my face—to think o' 'im bein' a reprobate! O Lord! cudna he be eleckit yet? Is there nae turnin' o' thy decrees? Na, na; that wadna do at a'. But while there's life there's houp. But wha kens whether he be alive or no? Naebody can tell. Glaidly wad I luik upon 's deid face gin I cud believe that his sowl wasna amang the lost. But eh! the torments o' that place! and the reik that gangs up for ever an' ever, smorin' (smothering) the stars! And my Anerew doon i' the hert o' 't cryin'! And me no able to win till him! O Lord! I canna say thy will be done. But dinna lay 't to my chairge; for gin ye was a mither yersel' ye wadna pit him there. O Lord! I'm verra ill-fashioned. I beg yer pardon. I'm near oot o' my min'. Forgie me, O Lord! for I hardly ken what I'm sayin'. He was my ain babe, my ain Anerew, and ye gae him to me yersel'. And noo he's for the finger o' scorn to pint at; an ootcast an' a wan'erer frae his ain country, an' daurna come within sicht o' 't for them 'at wad tak' the law o' 'm. An' it's a' drink—drink an' ill company! He wad hae dune weel eneuch gin they wad only hae latten him be. What for maun men be aye drink-drinkin' at something or ither? I never want it. Eh! gin I war as young as whan he was born, I wad be up an' awa' this verra nicht to luik for him. But it's no use me tryin' 't. O God! ance mair I pray thee to turn him frae the error o' 's ways afore he goes hence an' isna more. And O dinna lat Robert gang efter him, as he's like eneuch to do. Gie me grace to haud him ticht, that he may be to the praise o' thy glory for ever an' ever. Amen.'

Whether it was that the weary woman here fell asleep, or that she was too exhausted for further speech, Robert heard no more, though he remained there frozen with horror for some minutes after his grandmother had ceased. This, then, was the reason why she would never speak about his father! She kept all her thoughts about him for the silence of the night, and loneliness with the God who never sleeps, but watches the wicked all through the dark. And his father was one of the wicked! And God was against him! And when he died he would go to hell! But he was not dead yet: Robert was sure of that. And when he grew a man, he would go and seek him, and beg him on his knees to repent and come back to God, who would forgive him then, and take him to heaven when he died. And there he would be good, and good people would love him.

Something like this passed through the boy's mind ere he moved to creep from the room, for his was one of those natures which are active in the generation of hope. He had almost forgotten what he came there for; and had it not been that he had promised Shargar, he would have crept back to his bed and left him to bear his hunger as best he could. But now, first his right hand, then his left knee, like any other quadruped, he crawled to the door, rose only to his knees to open it, took almost a minute to the operation, then dropped and crawled again, till he had passed out, turned, and drawn the door to, leaving it slightly ajar. Then it struck him awfully that the same terrible passage must be gone through again. But he rose to his feet, for he had no shoes on, and there was little danger of making any noise, although it was pitch dark—he knew the house so well. With gathering courage, he felt his way to the kitchen, and there groped about; but he could find nothing beyond a few quarters of oat-cake, which, with a mug of water, he proceeded to carry up to Shargar in the garret.

When he reached the kitchen door, he was struck with amazement and for a moment with fresh fear. A light was shining into the transe from the stair which went up at right angles from the end of it. He knew it could not be grannie, and he heard Betty snoring in her own den, which opened from the kitchen. He thought it must be Shargar who had grown impatient; but how he had got hold of a light he could not think. As soon as he turned the corner, however, the doubt was changed into mystery. At the top of the broad low stair stood a woman-form with a candle in her hand, gazing about her as if wondering which way to go. The light fell full upon her face, the beauty of which was such that, with her dress, which was white—being, in fact, a nightgown—and her hair, which was hanging loose about her shoulders and down to her waist, it led Robert at once to the conclusion (his reasoning faculties already shaken by the events of the night) that she was an angel come down to comfort his grannie; and he kneeled involuntarily at the foot of the stair, and gazed up at her, with the cakes in one hand, and the mug of water in the other, like a meat-and-drink offering. Whether he had closed his eyes or bowed his head, he could not say; but he became suddenly aware that the angel had vanished—he knew not when, how, or whither. This for a time confirmed his assurance that it was an angel. And although he was undeceived before long, the impression made upon him that night was never effaced. But, indeed, whatever Falconer heard or saw was something more to him than it would have been to anybody else.

Elated, though awed, by the vision, he felt his way up the stair in the new darkness, as if walking in a holy dream, trod as if upon sacred ground as he crossed the landing where the angel had stood—went up and up, and found Shargar wide awake with expectant hunger. He, too, had caught a glimmer of the light. But Robert did not tell him what he had seen. That was too sacred a subject to enter upon with Shargar, and he was intent enough upon his supper not to be inquisitive.

Robert left him to finish it at his leisure, and returned to cross his grandmother's room once more, half expecting to find the angel standing by her bedside. But all was dark and still. Creeping back as he had come, he heard her quiet, though deep, breathing, and his mind was at ease about her for the night. What if the angel he had surprised had only come to appear to grannie in her sleep? Why not? There were such stories in the Bible, and grannie was certainly as good as some of the people in the Bible that saw angels—Sarah, for instance. And if the angels came to see grannie, why should they not have some care over his father as well? It might be—who could tell?

It is perhaps necessary to explain Robert's vision. The angel was the owner of the boxes he had seen at The Bear's Head. Looking around her room before going to bed, she had seen a trap in the floor near the wall, and raising it, had discovered a few steps of a stair leading down to a door. Curiosity naturally led her to examine it. The key was in the lock. It opened outwards, and there she found herself, to her surprise, in the heart of another dwelling, of lowlier aspect. She never saw Robert; for while he approached with shoeless feet, she had been glancing through the open door of the gable-room, and when he knelt, the light which she held in her hand had, I presume, hidden him from her. He, on his part, had not observed that the moveless door stood open at last.

I have already said that the house adjoining had been built by Robert's father. The lady's room was that which he had occupied with his wife, and in it Robert had been born. The door, with its trap-stair, was a natural invention for uniting the levels of the two houses, and a desirable one in not a few of the forms which the weather assumed in that region. When the larger house passed into other hands, it had never entered the minds of the simple people who occupied the contiguous dwellings, to build up the doorway between.



CHAPTER IX. A DISCOVERY.

The friendship of Robert had gained Shargar the favourable notice of others of the school-public. These were chiefly of those who came from the country, ready to follow an example set them by a town boy. When his desertion was known, moved both by their compassion for him, and their respect for Robert, they began to give him some portion of the dinner they brought with them; and never in his life had Shargar fared so well as for the first week after he had been cast upon the world. But in proportion as their interest faded with the novelty, so their appetites reasserted former claims of use and wont, and Shargar began once more to feel the pangs of hunger. For all that Robert could manage to procure for him without attracting the attention he was so anxious to avoid, was little more than sufficient to keep his hunger alive, Shargar being gifted with a great appetite, and Robert having no allowance of pocket-money from his grandmother. The threepence he had been able to spend on him were what remained of sixpence Mr. Innes had given him for an exercise which he wrote in blank verse instead of in prose—an achievement of which the school-master was proud, both from his reverence for Milton, and from his inability to compose a metrical line himself. And how and when he should ever possess another penny was even unimaginable. Shargar's shilling was likewise spent. So Robert could but go on pocketing instead of eating all that he dared, watching anxiously for opportunity of evading the eyes of his grandmother. On her dimness of sight, however, he depended too confidently after all; for either she was not so blind as he thought she was, or she made up for the defect of her vision by the keenness of her observation. She saw enough to cause her considerable annoyance, though it suggested nothing inconsistent with rectitude on the part of the boy, further than that there was something underhand going on. One supposition after another arose in the old lady's brain, and one after another was dismissed as improbable. First, she tried to persuade herself that he wanted to take the provisions to school with him, and eat them there—a proceeding of which she certainly did not approve, but for the reproof of which she was unwilling to betray the loopholes of her eyes. Next she concluded, for half a day, that he must have a pair of rabbits hidden away in some nook or other—possibly in the little strip of garden belonging to the house. And so conjecture followed conjecture for a whole week, during which, strange to say, not even Betty knew that Shargar slept in the house. For so careful and watchful were the two boys, that although she could not help suspecting something from the expression and behaviour of Robert, what that something might be she could not imagine; nor had she and her mistress as yet exchanged confidences on the subject. Her observation coincided with that of her mistress as to the disappearance of odds and ends of eatables—potatoes, cold porridge, bits of oat-cake; and even, on one occasion, when Shargar happened to be especially ravenous, a yellow, or cured and half-dried, haddock, which the lad devoured raw, vanished from her domain. He went to school in the morning smelling so strong in consequence, that they told him he must have been passing the night in Scroggie's cart, and not on his horse's back this time.

The boys kept their secret well.

One evening, towards the end of the week, Robert, after seeing Shargar disposed of for the night, proceeded to carry out a project which had grown in his brain within the last two days in consequence of an occurrence with which his relation to Shargar had had something to do. It was this:

The housing of Shargar in the garret had led Robert to make a close acquaintance with the place. He was familiar with all the outs and ins of the little room which he considered his own, for that was a civilized, being a plastered, ceiled, and comparatively well-lighted little room, but not with the other, which was three times its size, very badly lighted, and showing the naked couples from roof-tree to floor. Besides, it contained no end of dark corners, with which his childish imagination had associated undefined horrors, assuming now one shape, now another. Also there were several closets in it, constructed in the angles of the place, and several chests—two of which he had ventured to peep into. But although he had found them filled, not with bones, as he had expected, but one with papers, and one with garments, he had yet dared to carry his researches no further. One evening, however, when Betty was out, and he had got hold of her candle, and gone up to keep Shargar company for a few minutes, a sudden impulse seized him to have a peep into all the closets. One of them he knew a little about, as containing, amongst other things, his father's coat with the gilt buttons, and his great-grandfather's kilt, as well as other garments useful to Shargar: now he would see what was in the rest. He did not find anything very interesting, however, till he arrived at the last. Out of it he drew a long queer-shaped box into the light of Betty's dip.

'Luik here, Shargar!' he said under his breath, for they never dared to speak aloud in these precincts—'luik here! What can there be in this box? Is't a bairnie's coffin, duv ye think? Luik at it.'

In this case Shargar, having roamed the country a good deal more than Robert, and having been present at some merry-makings with his mother, of which there were comparatively few in that country-side, was better informed than his friend.

'Eh! Bob, duvna ye ken what that is? I thocht ye kent a' thing. That's a fiddle.'

'That's buff an' styte (stuff and nonsense), Shargar. Do ye think I dinna ken a fiddle whan I see ane, wi' its guts ootside o' 'ts wame, an' the thoomacks to screw them up wi' an' gar't skirl?'

'Buff an' styte yersel'!' cried Shargar, in indignation, from the bed. 'Gie's a haud o' 't.'

Robert handed him the case. Shargar undid the hooks in a moment, and revealed the creature lying in its shell like a boiled bivalve.

'I tellt ye sae!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'Maybe ye'll lippen to me (trust me) neist time.'

'An' I tellt you,' retorted Robert, with an equivocation altogether unworthy of his growing honesty. 'I was cocksure that cudna be a fiddle. There's the fiddle i' the hert o' 't! Losh! I min' noo. It maun be my grandfather's fiddle 'at I hae heard tell o'.'

'No to ken a fiddle-case!' reflected Shargar, with as much of contempt as it was possible for him to show.

'I tell ye what, Shargar,' returned Robert, indignantly; 'ye may ken the box o' a fiddle better nor I do, but de'il hae me gin I dinna ken the fiddle itsel' raither better nor ye do in a fortnicht frae this time. I s' tak' it to Dooble Sanny; he can play the fiddle fine. An' I'll play 't too, or the de'il s' be in't.'

'Eh, man, that 'll be gran'!' cried Shargar, incapable of jealousy. 'We can gang to a' the markets thegither and gaither baubees (halfpence).'

To this anticipation Robert returned no reply, for, hearing Betty come in, he judged it time to restore the violin to its case, and Betty's candle to the kitchen, lest she should invade the upper regions in search of it. But that very night he managed to have an interview with Dooble Sanny, the shoemaker, and it was arranged between them that Robert should bring his violin on the evening at which my story has now arrived.

Whatever motive he had for seeking to commence the study of music, it holds even in more important matters that, if the thing pursued be good, there is a hope of the pursuit purifying the motive. And Robert no sooner heard the fiddle utter a few mournful sounds in the hands of the soutar, who was no contemptible performer, than he longed to establish such a relation between himself and the strange instrument, that, dumb and deaf as it had been to him hitherto, it would respond to his touch also, and tell him the secrets of its queerly-twisted skull, full of sweet sounds instead of brains. From that moment he would be a musician for music's own sake, and forgot utterly what had appeared to him, though I doubt if it was, the sole motive of his desire to learn—namely, the necessity of retaining his superiority over Shargar.

What added considerably to the excitement of his feelings on the occasion, was the expression of reverence, almost of awe, with which the shoemaker took the instrument from its case, and the tenderness with which he handled it. The fact was that he had not had a violin in his hands for nearly a year, having been compelled to pawn his own in order to alleviate the sickness brought on his wife by his own ill-treatment of her, once that he came home drunk from a wedding. It was strange to think that such dirty hands should be able to bring such sounds out of the instrument the moment he got it safely cuddled under his cheek. So dirty were they, that it was said Dooble Sanny never required to carry any rosin with him for fiddler's need, his own fingers having always enough upon them for one bow at least. Yet the points of those fingers never lost the delicacy of their touch. Some people thought this was in virtue of their being washed only once a week—a custom Alexander justified on the ground that, in a trade like his, it was of no use to wash oftener, for he would be just as dirty again before night.

The moment he began to play, the face of the soutar grew ecstatic. He stopped at the very first note, notwithstanding, let fall his arms, the one with the bow, the other with the violin, at his sides, and said, with a deep-drawn respiration and lengthened utterance:

'Eh!'

Then after a pause, during which he stood motionless:

'The crater maun be a Cry Moany! Hear till her!' he added, drawing another long note.

Then, after another pause:

'She's a Straddle Vawrious at least! Hear till her. I never had sic a combination o' timmer and catgut atween my cleuks (claws) afore.'

As to its being a Stradivarius, or even a Cremona at all, the testimony of Dooble Sanny was not worth much on the point. But the shoemaker's admiration roused in the boy's mind a reverence for the individual instrument which he never lost.

From that day the two were friends.

Suddenly the soutar started off at full speed in a strathspey, which was soon lost in the wail of a Highland psalm-tune, giving place in its turn to 'Sic a wife as Willie had!' And on he went without pause, till Robert dared not stop any longer. The fiddle had bewitched the fiddler.

'Come as aften 's ye like, Robert, gin ye fess this leddy wi' ye,' said the soutar.

And he stroked the back of the violin tenderly with his open palm.

'But wad ye hae ony objection to lat it lie aside ye, and lat me come whan I can?'

'Objection, laddie? I wad as sune objeck to lattin' my ain wife lie aside me.'

'Ay,' said Robert, seized with some anxiety about the violin as he remembered the fate of the wife, 'but ye ken Elspet comes aff a' the waur sometimes.'

Softened by the proximity of the wonderful violin, and stung afresh by the boy's words as his conscience had often stung him before, for he loved his wife dearly save when the demon of drink possessed him, the tears rose in Elshender's eyes. He held out the violin to Robert, saying, with unsteady voice:

'Hae, tak her awa'. I dinna deserve to hae sic a thing i' my hoose. But hear me, Robert, and lat hearin' be believin'. I never was sae drunk but I cud tune my fiddle. Mair by token, ance they fand me lyin' o' my back i' the Corrie, an' the watter, they say, was ower a' but the mou' o' me; but I was haudin' my fiddle up abune my heid, and de'il a spark o' watter was upo' her.'

'It's a pity yer wife wasna yer fiddle, than, Sanny,' said Robert, with more presumption than wit.

''Deed ye're i' the richt, there, Robert. Hae, tak' yer fiddle.'

''Deed no,' returned Robert. 'I maun jist lippen (trust) to ye, Sanders. I canna bide langer the nicht; but maybe ye'll tell me hoo to haud her the neist time 'at I come—will ye?'

'That I wull, Robert, come whan ye like. An' gin ye come o' ane 'at cud play this fiddle as this fiddle deserves to be playt, ye'll do me credit.'

'Ye min' what that sumph Lumley said to me the ither nicht, Sanders, aboot my grandfather?'

'Ay, weel eneuch. A dish o' drucken havers!'

'It was true eneuch aboot my great-grandfather, though.'

'No! Was't railly?'

'Ay. He was the best piper in 's regiment at Culloden. Gin they had a' fouchten as he pipit, there wad hae been anither tale to tell. And he was toon-piper forby, jist like you, Sanders, efter they took frae him a' 'at he had.'

'Na! heard ye ever the like o' that! Weel, wha wad hae thocht it? Faith! we maun hae you fiddle as weel as yer lucky-daiddy pipit.—But here's the King o' Bashan comin' efter his butes, an' them no half dune yet!' exclaimed Dooble Sanny, settling in haste to his awl and his lingel (Fr. ligneul). 'He'll be roarin' mair like a bull o' the country than the king o' 't.'

As Robert departed, Peter Ogg came in, and as he passed the window, he heard the shoemaker averring:

'I haena risen frae my stule sin' ane o'clock; but there's a sicht to be dune to them, Mr. Ogg.'

Indeed, Alexander ab Alexandro, as Mr. Innes facetiously styled him, was in more ways than one worthy of the name of Dooble. There seemed to be two natures in the man, which all his music had not yet been able to blend.



CHAPTER X. ANOTHER DISCOVERY IN THE GARRET.

Little did Robert dream of the reception that awaited him at home. Almost as soon as he had left the house, the following events began to take place.

The mistress's bell rang, and Betty 'gaed benn the hoose to see what she cud be wantin',' whereupon a conversation ensued.

'Wha was that at the door, Betty?' asked Mrs. Falconer; for Robert had not shut the door so carefully as he ought, seeing that the deafness of his grandmother was of much the same faculty as her blindness.

Had Robert not had a hold of Betty by the forelock of her years, he would have been unable to steal any liberty at all. Still Betty had a conscience, and although she would not offend Robert if she could help it, yet she would not lie.

''Deed, mem, I canna jist distinckly say 'at I heard the door,' she answered.

'Whaur's Robert?' was her next question.

'He's generally up the stair aboot this hoor, mem—that is, whan he's no i' the parlour at 's lessons.'

'What gangs he sae muckle up the stair for, Betty, do ye ken? It's something by ordinar' wi' 'm.'

''Deed I dinna ken, mem. I never tuik it into my heid to gang considerin' aboot it. He'll hae some ploy o' 's ain, nae doobt. Laddies will be laddies, ye ken, mem.'

'I doobt, Betty, ye'll be aidin' an' abettin'. An' it disna become yer years, Betty.'

'My years are no to fin' faut wi', mem. They're weel eneuch.'

'That's naething to the pint, Betty. What's the laddie aboot?'

'Do ye mean whan he gangs up the stair, mem?'

'Ay. Ye ken weel eneuch what I mean.'

'Weel, mem, I tell ye I dinna ken. An' ye never heard me tell ye a lee sin' ever I was i' yer service, mem.'

'Na, nae doonricht. Ye gang aboot it an' aboot it, an' at last ye come sae near leein' that gin ye spak anither word, ye wad be at it; and it jist fleys (frights) me frae speirin' ae ither question at ye. An' that's hoo ye win oot o' 't. But noo 'at it's aboot my ain oye (grandson), I'm no gaein' to tyne (lose) him to save a woman o' your years, wha oucht to ken better; an sae I'll speir at ye, though ye suld be driven to lee like Sawtan himsel'.—What's he aboot whan he gangs up the stair? Noo!'

'Weel, as sure's deith, I dinna ken. Ye drive me to sweirin', mem, an' no to leein'.'

'I carena. Hae ye no idea aboot it, than, Betty?'

'Weel, mem, I think sometimes he canna be weel, and maun hae a tod (fox) in 's stamack, or something o' that nater. For what he eats is awfu'. An' I think whiles he jist gangs up the stair to eat at 's ain wull.'

'That jumps wi' my ain observations, Betty. Do ye think he micht hae a rabbit, or maybe a pair o' them, in some boxie i' the garret, noo?'

'And what for no, gin he had, mem?'

'What for no? Nesty stinkin' things! But that's no the pint. I aye hae to haud ye to the pint, Betty. The pint is, whether he has rabbits or no?'

'Or guinea-pigs,' suggested Betty.

'Weel.'

'Or maybe a pup or twa. Or I kent a laddie ance 'at keepit a haill faimily o' kittlins. Or maybe he micht hae a bit lammie. There was an uncle o' min' ain—'

'Haud yer tongue, Betty! Ye hae ower muckle to say for a' the sense there's intil 't.'

'Weel, mem, ye speirt questions at me.'

'Weel, I hae had eneuch o' yer answers, Betty. Gang and tell Robert to come here direckly.'

Betty went, knowing perfectly that Robert had gone out, and returned with the information. Her mistress searched her face with a keen eye.

'That maun hae been himsel' efter a' whan ye thocht ye hard the door gang,' said Betty.

'It's a strange thing that I suld hear him benn here wi' the door steekit, an' your door open at the verra door-cheek o' the ither, an' you no hear him, Betty. And me sae deif as weel!'

''Deed, mem,' retorted Betty, losing her temper a little, 'I can be as deif 's ither fowk mysel' whiles.'

When Betty grew angry, Mrs. Falconer invariably grew calm, or, at least, put her temper out of sight. She was silent now, and continued silent till Betty moved to return to her kitchen, when she said, in a tone of one who had just arrived at an important resolution:

'Betty, we'll jist awa' up the stair an' luik.'

'Weel, mem, I hae nae objections.'

'Nae objections! What for suld you or ony ither body hae ony objections to me gaein' whaur I like i' my ain hoose? Umph!' exclaimed Mrs. Falconer, turning and facing her maid.

'In coorse, mem. I only meant I had nae objections to gang wi' ye.'

'And what for suld you or ony ither woman that I paid twa pun' five i' the half-year till, daur to hae objections to gaein' whaur I wantit ye to gang i' my ain hoose?'

'Hoot, mem! it was but a slip o' the tongue—naething mair.'

'Slip me nae sic slips, or ye'll come by a fa' at last, I doobt, Betty,' concluded Mrs. Falconer, in a mollified tone, as she turned and led the way from the room.

They got a candle in the kitchen and proceeded up-stairs, Mrs. Falconer still leading, and Betty following. They did not even look into the ga'le-room, not doubting that the dignity of the best bed-room was in no danger of being violated even by Robert, but took their way upwards to the room in which he kept his school-books—almost the only articles of property which the boy possessed. Here they found nothing suspicious. All was even in the best possible order—not a very wonderful fact, seeing a few books and a slate were the only things there besides the papers on the shelves.

What the feelings of Shargar must have been when he heard the steps and voices, and saw the light approaching his place of refuge, we will not change our point of view to inquire. He certainly was as little to be envied at that moment as at any moment during the whole of his existence.

The first sense Mrs. Falconer made use of in the search after possible animals lay in her nose. She kept snuffing constantly, but, beyond the usual musty smell of neglected apartments, had as yet discovered nothing. The moment she entered the upper garret, however—

'There's an ill-faured smell here, Betty,' she said, believing that they had at last found the trail of the mystery; 'but it's no like the smell o' rabbits. Jist luik i' the nuik there ahin' the door.'

'There's naething here,' responded Betty.

'Roon the en' o' that kist there. I s' luik into the press.'

As Betty rose from her search behind the chest and turned towards her mistress, her eyes crossed the cavernous opening of the bed. There, to her horror, she beheld a face like that of a galvanised corpse staring at her from the darkness. Shargar was in a sitting posture, paralysed with terror, waiting, like a fascinated bird, till Mrs. Falconer and Betty should make the final spring upon him, and do whatever was equivalent to devouring him upon the spot. He had sat up to listen to the noise of their ascending footsteps, and fear had so overmastered him, that he either could not, or forgot that he could lie down and cover his head with some of the many garments scattered around him.

'I didna say whusky, did I?' he kept repeating to himself, in utter imbecility of fear.

'The Lord preserve 's!' exclaimed Betty, the moment she could speak; for during the first few seconds, having caught the infection of Shargar's expression, she stood equally paralysed. 'The Lord preserve 's!' she repeated.

'Ance is eneuch,' said Mrs. Falconer, sharply, turning round to see what the cause of Betty's ejaculation might be.

I have said that she was dim-sighted. The candle they had was little better than a penny dip. The bed was darker than the rest of the room. Shargar's face had none of the more distinctive characteristics of manhood upon it.

'Gude preserve 's!' exclaimed Mrs. Falconer in her turn: 'it's a wumman.'

Poor deluded Shargar, thinking himself safer under any form than that which he actually bore, attempted no protest against the mistake. But, indeed, he was incapable of speech. The two women flew upon him to drag him out of bed. Then first recovering his powers of motion, he sprung up in an agony of terror, and darted out between them, overturning Betty in his course.

'Ye rouch limmer!' cried Betty, from the floor. 'Ye lang-leggit jaud!' she added, as she rose—and at the same moment Shargar banged the street-door behind him in his terror—'I wat ye dinna carry yer coats ower syde (too long)!'

For Shargar, having discovered that the way to get the most warmth from Robert's great-grandfather's kilt was to wear it in the manner for which it had been fabricated, was in the habit of fastening it round his waist before he got into bed; and the eye of Betty, as she fell, had caught the swing of this portion of his attire.

But poor Mrs. Falconer, with sunken head, walked out of the garret in the silence of despair. She went slowly down the steep stair, supporting herself against the wall, her round-toed shoes creaking solemnly as she went, took refuge in the ga'le-room, and burst into a violent fit of weeping. For such depravity she was not prepared. What a terrible curse hung over her family! Surely they were all reprobate from the womb, not one elected for salvation from the guilt of Adam's fall, and therefore abandoned to Satan as his natural prey, to be led captive of him at his will. She threw herself on her knees at the side of the bed, and prayed heart-brokenly. Betty heard her as she limped past the door on her way back to her kitchen.

Meantime Shargar had rushed across the next street on his bare feet into the Crookit Wynd, terrifying poor old Kirstan Peerie, the divisions betwixt the compartments of whose memory had broken down, into the exclamation to her next neighbour, Tam Rhin, with whom she was trying to gossip:

'Eh, Tammas! that'll be ane o' the slauchtert at Culloden.'

He never stopped till he reached his mother's deserted abode—strange instinct! There he ran to earth like a hunted fox. Rushing at the door, forgetful of everything but refuge, he found it unlocked, and closing it behind him, stood panting like the hart that has found the water-brooks. The owner had looked in one day to see whether the place was worth repairing, for it was a mere outhouse, and had forgotten to turn the key when he left it. Poor Shargar! Was it more or less of a refuge that the mother that bore him was not there either to curse or welcome his return? Less—if we may judge from a remark he once made in my hearing many long years after:

'For, ye see,' he said, 'a mither's a mither, be she the verra de'il.'

Searching about in the dark, he found the one article unsold by the landlord, a stool, with but two of its natural three legs. On this he balanced himself and waited—simply for what Robert would do; for his faith in Robert was unbounded, and he had no other hope on earth. But Shargar was not miserable. In that wretched hovel, his bare feet clasping the clay floor in constant search of a wavering equilibrium, with pitch darkness around him, and incapable of the simplest philosophical or religious reflection, he yet found life good. For it had interest. Nay, more, it had hope. I doubt, however, whether there is any interest at all without hope.

While he sat there, Robert, thinking him snug in the garret, was walking quietly home from the shoemaker's; and his first impulse on entering was to run up and recount the particulars of his interview with Alexander. Arrived in the dark garret, he called Shargar, as usual, in a whisper—received no reply—thought he was asleep—called louder (for he had had a penny from his grandmother that day for bringing home two pails of water for Betty, and had just spent it upon a loaf for him)—but no Shargar replied. Thereupon he went to the bed to lay hold of him and shake him. But his searching hands found no Shargar. Becoming alarmed, he ran down-stairs to beg a light from Betty.

When he reached the kitchen, he found Betty's nose as much in the air as its construction would permit. For a hook-nosed animal, she certainly was the most harmless and ovine creature in the world, but this was a case in which feminine modesty was both concerned and aggrieved. She showed her resentment no further, however, than by simply returning no answer in syllable, or sound, or motion, to Robert's request. She was washing up the tea-things, and went on with her work as if she had been in absolute solitude, saving that her countenance could hardly have kept up that expression of injured dignity had such been the case. Robert plainly saw, to his great concern, that his secret had been discovered in his absence, and that Shargar had been expelled with contumely. But, with an instinct of facing the worst at once which accompanied him through life, he went straight to his grandmother's parlour.

'Well, grandmamma,' he said, trying to speak as cheerfully as he could.

Grannie's prayers had softened her a little, else she would have been as silent as Betty; for it was from her mistress that Betty had learned this mode of torturing a criminal. So she was just able to return his greeting in the words, 'Weel, Robert,' pronounced in a finality of tone that indicated she had done her utmost, and had nothing to add.

'Here's a browst (brewage)!' thought Robert to himself; and, still on the principle of flying at the first of mischief he saw—the best mode of meeting it, no doubt—addressed his grandmother at once. The effort necessary gave a tone of defiance to his words.

'What for willna ye speik to me, grannie?' he said. 'I'm no a haithen, nor yet a papist.'

'Ye're waur nor baith in ane, Robert.'

'Hoots! ye winna say baith, grannie,' returned Robert, who, even at the age of fourteen, when once compelled to assert himself, assumed a modest superiority.

'Nane o' sic impidence!' retorted Mrs. Falconer. 'I wonner whaur ye learn that. But it's nae wonner. Evil communications corrupt gude mainners. Ye're a lost prodigal, Robert, like yer father afore ye. I hae jist been sittin' here thinkin' wi' mysel' whether it wadna be better for baith o' 's to lat ye gang an' reap the fruit o' yer doin's at ance; for the hard ways is the best road for transgressors. I'm no bund to keep ye.'

'Weel, weel, I s' awa' to Shargar. Him and me 'ill haud on thegither better nor you an' me, grannie. He's a puir cratur, but he can stick till a body.'

'What are ye haverin' aboot Shargar for, ye heepocreet loon? Ye'll no gang to Shargar, I s' warran'! Ye'll be efter that vile limmer that's turnt my honest hoose intil a sty this last fortnicht.'

'Grannie, I dinna ken what ye mean.'

'She kens, than. I sent her aff like ane o' Samson's foxes, wi' a firebrand at her tail. It's a pity it wasna tied atween the twa o' ye.'

'Preserve 's, grannie! Is't possible ye hae ta'en Shargar for ane o' wumman-kin'?'

'I ken naething aboot Shargar, I tell ye. I ken that Betty an' me tuik an ill-faured dame i' the bed i' the garret.'

'Cud it be his mither?' thought Robert in bewilderment; but he recovered himself in a moment, and answered,

'Shargar may be a quean efter a', for onything 'at I ken to the contrairy; but I aye tuik him for a loon. Faith, sic a quean as he'd mak!'

And careless to resist the ludicrousness of the idea, he burst into a loud fit of laughter, which did more to reassure his grannie than any amount of protestation could have done, however she pretended to take offence at his ill-timed merriment.

Seeing his grandmother staggered, Robert gathered courage to assume the offensive.

'But, granny! hoo ever Betty, no to say you, cud hae driven oot a puir half-stervit cratur like Shargar, even supposin' he oucht to hae been in coaties, and no in troosers—and the mither o' him run awa' an' left him—it's mair nor I can unnerstan.' I misdoobt me sair but he's gane and droont himsel'.'

Robert knew well enough that Shargar would not drown himself without at least bidding him good-bye; but he knew too that his grandmother could be wrought upon. Her conscience was more tender than her feelings; and this peculiarity occasioned part of the mutual non-understanding rather than misunderstanding between her grandson and herself. The first relation she bore to most that came near her was one of severity and rebuke; but underneath her cold outside lay a warm heart, to which conscience acted the part of a somewhat capricious stoker, now quenching its heat with the cold water of duty, now stirring it up with the poker of reproach, and ever treating it as an inferior and a slave. But her conscience was, on the whole, a better friend to her race than her heart; and, indeed, the conscience is always a better friend than a heart whose motions are undirected by it. From Falconer's account of her, however, I cannot help thinking that she not unfrequently took refuge in severity of tone and manner from the threatened ebullition of a feeling which she could not otherwise control, and which she was ashamed to manifest. Possibly conscience had spoken more and more gently as its behests were more and more readily obeyed, until the heart began to gather courage, and at last, as in many old people, took the upper hand, which was outwardly inconvenient to one of Mrs. Falconer's temperament. Hence, in doing the kindest thing in the world, she would speak in a tone of command, even of rebuke, as if she were compelling the performance of the most unpleasant duty in the person who received the kindness. But the human heart is hard to analyze, and, indeed, will not submit quietly to the operation, however gently performed. Nor is the result at all easy to put into words. It is best shown in actions.

Again, it may appear rather strange that Robert should be able to talk in such an easy manner to his grandmother, seeing he had been guilty of concealment, if not of deception. But she had never been so actively severe towards Robert as she had been towards her own children. To him she was wonderfully gentle for her nature, and sought to exercise the saving harshness which she still believed necessary, solely in keeping from him every enjoyment of life which the narrowest theories as to the rule and will of God could set down as worldly. Frivolity, of which there was little in this sober boy, was in her eyes a vice; loud laughter almost a crime; cards, and novelles, as she called them, were such in her estimation, as to be beyond my powers of characterization. Her commonest injunction was, 'Noo be douce,'—that is sober—uttered to the soberest boy she could ever have known. But Robert was a large-hearted boy, else this life would never have had to be written; and so, through all this, his deepest nature came into unconscious contact with that of his noble old grandmother. There was nothing small about either of them. Hence Robert was not afraid of her. He had got more of her nature in him than of her son's. She and his own mother had more share in him than his father, though from him he inherited good qualities likewise.

He had concealed his doings with Shargar simply because he believed they could not be done if his grandmother knew of his plans. Herein he did her less than justice. But so unpleasant was concealment to his nature, and so much did the dread of discovery press upon him, that the moment he saw the thing had come out into the daylight of her knowledge, such a reaction of relief took place as, operating along with his deep natural humour and the comical circumstance of the case, gave him an ease and freedom of communication which he had never before enjoyed with her. Likewise there was a certain courage in the boy which, if his own natural disposition had not been so quiet that he felt the negations of her rule the less, might have resulted in underhand doings of a very different kind, possibly, from those of benevolence.

He must have been a strange being to look at, I always think, at this point of his development, with his huge nose, his black eyes, his lanky figure, and his sober countenance, on which a smile was rarely visible, but from which burst occasional guffaws of laughter.

At the words 'droont himsel',' Mrs. Falconer started.

'Rin, laddie, rin,' she said, 'an' fess him back direckly! Betty! Betty! gang wi' Robert and help him to luik for Shargar. Ye auld, blin', doited body, 'at says ye can see, and canna tell a lad frae a lass!'

'Na, na, grannie. I'm no gaein' oot wi' a dame like her trailin' at my fut. She wad be a sair hinnerance to me. Gin Shargar be to be gotten—that is, gin he be in life—I s' get him wantin' Betty. And gin ye dinna ken him for the crater ye fand i' the garret, he maun be sair changed sin' I left him there.'

'Weel, weel, Robert, gang yer wa's. But gin ye be deceivin' me, may the Lord—forgie ye, Robert, for sair ye'll need it.'

'Nae fear o' that, grannie,' returned Robert, from the street door, and vanished.

Mrs. Falconer stalked—No, I will not use that word of the gait of a woman like my friend's grandmother. 'Stately stept she butt the hoose' to Betty. She felt strangely soft at the heart, Robert not being yet proved a reprobate; but she was not therefore prepared to drop one atom of the dignity of her relation to her servant.

'Betty,' she said, 'ye hae made a mistak.'

'What's that, mem?' returned Betty.

'It wasna a lass ava; it was that crater Shargar.'

'Ye said it was a lass yersel' first, mem.'

'Ye ken weel eneuch that I'm short sichtit, an' hae been frae the day o' my birth.'

'I'm no auld eneuch to min' upo' that, mem,' returned Betty revengefully, but in an undertone, as if she did not intend her mistress to hear, And although she heard well enough, her mistress adopted the subterfuge. 'But I'll sweir the crater I saw was in cwytes (petticoats).'

'Sweir not at all, Betty. Ye hae made a mistak ony gait.'

'Wha says that, mem?'

'Robert.'

'Aweel, gin he be tellin' the trowth—'

'Daur ye mint (insinuate) to me that a son o' mine wad tell onything but the trowth?'

'Na, na, mem. But gin that wasna a quean, ye canna deny but she luikit unco like ane, and no a blate (bashful) ane eyther.'

'Gin he was a loon, he wadna luik like a blate lass, ony gait, Betty. And there ye're wrang.'

'Weel, weel, mem, hae 't yer ain gait,' muttered Betty.

'I wull hae 't my ain gait,' retorted her mistress, 'because it's the richt gait, Betty. An' noo ye maun jist gang up the stair, an' get the place cleant oot an' put in order.'

'I wull do that, mem.'

'Ay wull ye. An' luik weel aboot, Betty, you that can see sae weel, in case there suld be ony cattle aboot; for he's nane o' the cleanest, yon dame!'

'I wull do that, mem.'

'An' gang direckly, afore he comes back.'

'Wha comes back?'

'Robert, of course.'

'What for that?'

''Cause he's comin' wi' 'im.'

'What he 's comin' wi' 'im?'

'Ca' 't she, gin ye like. It's Shargar.'

'Wha says that?' exclaimed Betty, sniffing and starting at once.

'I say that. An' ye gang an' du what I tell ye, this minute.'

Betty obeyed instantly; for the tone in which the last words were spoken was one she was not accustomed to dispute. She only muttered as she went, 'It 'll a' come upo' me as usual.'

Betty's job was long ended before Robert returned. Never dreaming that Shargar could have gone back to the old haunt, he had looked for him everywhere before that occurred to him as a last chance. Nor would he have found him even then, for he would not have thought of his being inside the deserted house, had not Shargar heard his footsteps in the street.

He started up from his stool saying, 'That's Bob!' but was not sure enough to go to the door: he might be mistaken; it might be the landlord! He heard the feet stop and did not move; but when he heard them begin to go away again, he rushed to the door, and bawled on the chance at the top of his voice, 'Bob! Bob!'

'Eh! ye crater!' said Robert, 'ir ye there efter a'?

'Eh! Bob,' exclaimed Shargar, and burst into tears. 'I thocht ye wad come efter me.'

'Of coorse,' answered Robert, coolly. 'Come awa' hame.'

'Whaur til?' asked Shargar in dismay.

'Hame to yer ain bed at my grannie's.'

'Na, na,' said Shargar, hurriedly, retreating within the door of the hovel. 'Na, na, Bob, lad, I s' no du that. She's an awfu' wuman, that grannie o' yours. I canna think hoo ye can bide wi' her. I'm weel oot o' her grups, I can tell ye.'

It required a good deal of persuasion, but at last Robert prevailed upon Shargar to return. For was not Robert his tower of strength? And if Robert was not frightened at his grannie, or at Betty, why should he be? At length they entered Mrs. Falconer's parlour, Robert dragging in Shargar after him, having failed altogether in encouraging him to enter after a more dignified fashion.

It must be remembered that although Shargar was still kilted, he was not the less trowsered, such as the trowsers were. It makes my heart ache to think of those trowsers—not believing trowsers essential to blessedness either, but knowing the superiority of the old Roman costume of the kilt.

No sooner had Mrs. Falconer cast her eyes upon him than she could not but be convinced of the truth of Robert's averment.

'Here he is, grannie; and gin ye bena saitisfeed yet—'

'Haud yer tongue, laddie. Ye hae gi'en me nae cause to doobt yer word.'

Indeed, during Robert's absence, his grandmother had had leisure to perceive of what an absurd folly she had been guilty. She had also had time to make up her mind as to her duty with regard to Shargar; and the more she thought about it, the more she admired the conduct of her grandson, and the better she saw that it would be right to follow his example. No doubt she was the more inclined to this benevolence that she had as it were received her grandson back from the jaws of death.

When the two lads entered, from her arm-chair Mrs. Falconer examined Shargar from head to foot with the eye of a queen on her throne, and a countenance immovable in stern gentleness, till Shargar would gladly have sunk into the shelter of the voluminous kilt from the gaze of those quiet hazel eyes.

At length she spoke:

'Robert, tak him awa'.'

'Whaur'll I tak him till, grannie?'

'Tak him up to the garret. Betty 'ill ha' ta'en a tub o' het water up there 'gen this time, and ye maun see that he washes himsel' frae heid to fut, or he s' no bide an 'oor i' my hoose. Gang awa' an' see till 't this minute.'

But she detained them yet awhile with various directions in regard of cleansing, for the carrying out of which Robert was only too glad to give his word. She dismissed them at last, and Shargar by and by found himself in bed, clean, and, for the first time in his life, between a pair of linen sheets—not altogether to his satisfaction, for mere order and comfort were substituted for adventure and success.

But greater trials awaited him. In the morning he was visited by Brodie, the tailor, and Elshender, the shoemaker, both of whom he held in awe as his superiors in the social scale, and by them handled and measured from head to feet, the latter included; after which he had to lie in bed for three days, till his clothes came home; for Betty had carefully committed every article of his former dress to the kitchen fire, not without a sense of pollution to the bottom of her kettle. Nor would he have got them for double the time, had not Robert haunted the tailor, as well as the soutar, like an evil conscience, till they had finished them. Thus grievous was Shargar's introduction to the comforts of respectability. Nor did he like it much better when he was dressed, and able to go about; for not only was he uncomfortable in his new clothes, which, after the very easy fit of the old ones, felt like a suit of plate-armour, but he was liable to be sent for at any moment by the awful sovereignty in whose dominions he found himself, and which, of course, proceeded to instruct him not merely in his own religious duties, but in the religious theories of his ancestors, if, indeed, Shargar's ancestors ever had any. And now the Shorter Catechism seemed likely to be changed into the Longer Catechism; for he had it Sundays as we'll as Saturdays, besides Alleine's Alarm to the Unconverted, Baxter's Saint's Rest, Erskine's Gospel Sonnets, and other books of a like kind. Nor was it any relief to Shargar that the gloom was broken by the incomparable Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War, for he cared for none of these things. Indeed, so dreary did he find it all, that his love to Robert was never put to such a severe test. But for that, he would have run for it. Twenty times a day was he so tempted.

At school, though it was better, yet it was bad. For he was ten times as much laughed at for his new clothes, though they were of the plainest, as he had been for his old rags. Still he bore all the pangs of unwelcome advancement without a grumble, for the sake of his friend alone, whose dog he remained as much as ever. But his past life of cold and neglect, and hunger and blows, and homelessness and rags, began to glimmer as in the distance of a vaporous sunset, and the loveless freedom he had then enjoyed gave it a bloom as of summer-roses.

I wonder whether there may not have been in some unknown corner of the old lady's mind this lingering remnant of paganism, that, in reclaiming the outcast from the error of his ways, she was making an offering acceptable to that God whom her mere prayers could not move to look with favour upon her prodigal son Andrew. Nor from her own acknowledged religious belief as a background would it have stuck so fiery off either. Indeed, it might have been a partial corrective of some yet more dreadful articles of her creed,—which she held, be it remembered, because she could not help it.



CHAPTER XI. PRIVATE INTERVIEWS.

The winter passed slowly away. Robert and Shargar went to school together, and learned their lessons together at Mrs. Falconer's table. Shargar soon learned to behave with tolerable propriety; was obedient, as far as eye-service went; looked as queer as ever; did what he pleased, which was nowise very wicked, the moment he was out of the old lady's sight; was well fed and well cared for; and when he was asked how he was, gave the invariable answer: 'Middlin'.' He was not very happy.

There was little communication in words between the two boys, for the one had not much to say, and the pondering fits of the other grew rather than relaxed in frequency and intensity. Yet amongst chance acquaintances in the town Robert had the character of a wag, of which he was totally unaware himself. Indeed, although he had more than the ordinary share of humour, I suspect it was not so much his fun as his earnest that got him the character; for he would say such altogether unheard-of and strange things, that the only way they were capable of accounting for him was as a humorist.

'Eh!' he said once to Elshender, during a pause common to a thunder-storm and a lesson on the violin 'eh! wadna ye like to be up in that clood wi' a spaud, turnin' ower the divots and catchin' the flashes lyin' aneath them like lang reid fiery worms?'

'Ay, man, but gin ye luik up to the cloods that gait, ye'll never be muckle o' a fiddler.'

This was merely an outbreak of that insolence of advice so often shown to the young from no vantage-ground but that of age and faithlessness, reminding one of the 'jigging fool' who interfered between Brutus and Cassius on the sole ground that he had seen more years than they. As if ever a fiddler that did not look up to the clouds would be anything but a catgut-scraper! Even Elshender's fiddle was the one angel that held back the heavy curtain of his gross nature, and let the sky shine through. He ought to have been set fiddling every Sunday morning, and from his fiddling dragged straight to church. It was the only thing man could have done for his conversion, for then his heart was open, But I fear the prayers would have closed it before the sermon came. He should rather have been compelled to take his fiddle to church with him, and have a gentle scrape at it in the pauses of the service; only there are no such pauses in the service, alas! And Dooble Sanny, though not too religious to get drunk occasionally, was a great deal too religious to play his fiddle on the Sabbath: he would not willingly anger the powers above; but it was sometimes a sore temptation, especially after he got possession of old Mr. Falconer's wonderful instrument.

'Hoots, man!' he would say to Robert; 'dinna han'le, her as gin she war an egg-box. Tak haud o' her as gin she war a leevin' crater. Ye maun jist straik her canny, an' wile the music oot o' her; for she's like ither women: gin ye be rouch wi' her, ye winna get a word oot o' her. An' dinna han'le her that gait. She canna bide to be contred an' pu'd this gait and that gait.—Come to me, my bonny leddy. Ye'll tell me yer story, winna ye, my dauty (pet)?'

And with every gesture as if he were humouring a shy and invalid girl, he would, as he said, wile the music out of her in sobs and wailing, till the instrument, gathering courage in his embrace, grew gently merry in its confidence, and broke at last into airy laughter. He always spoke, and apparently thought, of his violin as a woman, just as a sailor does of his craft. But there was nothing about him, except his love for music and its instruments, to suggest other than a most uncivilized nature. That which was fine in him was constantly checked and held down by the gross; the merely animal overpowered the spiritual; and it was only upon occasion that his heavenly companion, the violin, could raise him a few feet above the mire and the clay. She never succeeded in setting his feet on a rock; while, on the contrary, he often dragged her with him into the mire of questionable company and circumstances. Worthy Mr. Falconer would have been horrified to see his umquhile modest companion in such society as that into which she was now introduced at times. But nevertheless the soutar was a good and patient teacher; and although it took Robert rather more than a fortnight to redeem his pledge to Shargar, he did make progress. It could not, however, be rapid, seeing that an hour at a time, two evenings in the week, was all that he could give to the violin. Even with this moderation, the risk of his absence exciting his grandmother's suspicion and inquiry was far from small.

And now, were those really faded old memories of his grandfather and his merry kindness, all so different from the solemn benevolence of his grandmother, which seemed to revive in his bosom with the revivification of the violin? The instrument had surely laid up a story in its hollow breast, had been dreaming over it all the time it lay hidden away in the closet, and was now telling out its dreams about the old times in the ear of the listening boy. To him also it began to assume something of that mystery and life which had such a softening, and, for the moment at least, elevating influence on his master.

At length the love of the violin had grown upon him so, that he could not but cast about how he might enjoy more of its company. It would not do, for many reasons, to go oftener to the shoemaker's, especially now that the days were getting longer. Nor was that what he wanted. He wanted opportunity for practice. He wanted to be alone with the creature, to see if she would not say something more to him than she had ever said yet. Wafts and odours of melodies began to steal upon him ere he was aware in the half lights between sleeping and waking: if he could only entice them to creep out of the violin, and once 'bless his humble ears' with the bodily hearing of them! Perhaps he might—who could tell? But how? But where?

There was a building in Rothieden not old, yet so deserted that its very history seemed to have come to a standstill, and the dust that filled it to have fallen from the plumes of passing centuries. It was the property of Mrs. Falconer, left her by her husband. Trade had gradually ebbed away from the town till the thread-factory stood unoccupied, with all its machinery rusting and mouldering, just as the work-people had risen and left it one hot, midsummer day, when they were told that their services were no longer required. Some of the thread even remained upon the spools, and in the hollows of some of the sockets the oil had as yet dried only into a paste; although to Robert the desertion of the place appeared immemorial. It stood at a furlong's distance from the house, on the outskirt of the town. There was a large, neglected garden behind it, with some good fruit-trees, and plenty of the bushes which boys love for the sake of their berries. After grannie's jam-pots were properly filled, the remnant of these, a gleaning far greater than the gathering, was at the disposal of Robert, and, philosopher although in some measure he was already, he appreciated the privilege. Haunting this garden in the previous summer, he had for the first time made acquaintance with the interior of the deserted factory. The door to the road was always kept locked, and the key of it lay in one of grannie's drawers; but he had then discovered a back entrance less securely fastened, and with a strange mingling of fear and curiosity had from time to time extended his rambles over what seemed to him the huge desolation of the place. Half of it was well built of stone and lime, but of the other half the upper part was built of wood, which now showed signs of considerable decay. One room opened into another through the length of the place, revealing a vista of machines, standing with an air of the last folding of the wings of silence over them, and the sense of a deeper and deeper sinking into the soundless abyss. But their activity was not so far vanished but that by degrees Robert came to fancy that he had some time or other seen a woman seated at each of those silent powers, whose single hand set the whole frame in motion, with its numberless spindles and spools rapidly revolving—a vague mystery of endless threads in orderly complication, out of which came some desired, to him unknown, result, so that the whole place was full of a bewildering tumult of work, every little reel contributing its share, as the water-drops clashing together make the roar of a tempest. Now all was still as the church on a week-day, still as the school on a Saturday afternoon. Nay, the silence seemed to have settled down like the dust, and grown old and thick, so dead and old that the ghost of the ancient noise had arisen to haunt the place.

Thither would Robert carry his violin, and there would he woo her.

'I'm thinkin' I maun tak her wi' me the nicht, Sanders,' he said, holding the fiddle lovingly to his bosom, after he had finished his next lesson.

The shoemaker looked blank.

'Ye're no gaein' to desert me, are ye?'

'Na, weel I wat!' returned Robert. 'But I want to try her at hame. I maun get used till her a bittie, ye ken, afore I can du onything wi' her.'

'I wiss ye had na brought her here ava. What I am to du wantin' her!'

'What for dinna ye get yer ain back?'

'I haena the siller, man. And, forbye, I doobt I wadna be that sair content wi' her noo gin I had her. I used to think her gran'. But I'm clean oot o' conceit o' her. That bonnie leddy's ta'en 't clean oot o' me.'

'But ye canna hae her aye, ye ken, Sanders. She's no mine. She's my grannie's, ye ken.'

'What's the use o' her to her? She pits nae vailue upon her. Eh, man, gin she wad gie her to me, I wad haud her i' the best o' shune a' the lave o' her days.'

'That wadna be muckle, Sanders, for she hasna had a new pair sin' ever I mind.'

'But I wad haud Betty in shune as weel.'

'Betty pays for her ain shune, I reckon.'

'Weel, I wad haud you in shune, and yer bairns, and yer bairns' bairns,' cried the soutar, with enthusiasm.

'Hoot, toot, man! Lang or that ye'll be fiddlin' i' the new Jeroozlem.'

'Eh, man!' said Alexander, looking up—he had just cracked the roset-ends off his hands, for he had the upper leather of a boot in the grasp of the clams, and his right hand hung arrested on its blind way to the awl—'duv ye think there'll be fiddles there? I thocht they war a' hairps, a thing 'at I never saw, but it canna be up till a fiddle.'

'I dinna ken,' answered Robert; 'but ye suld mak a pint o' seein' for yersel'.'

'Gin I thoucht there wad be fiddles there, faith I wad hae a try. It wadna be muckle o' a Jeroozlem to me wantin' my fiddle. But gin there be fiddles, I daursay they'll be gran' anes. I daursay they wad gi' me a new ane—I mean ane as auld as Noah's 'at he played i' the ark whan the de'il cam' in by to hearken. I wad fain hae a try. Ye ken a' aboot it wi' that grannie o' yours: hoo's a body to begin?'

'By giein' up the drink, man.'

'Ay—ay—ay—I reckon ye're richt. Weel, I'll think aboot it whan ance I'm throu wi' this job. That'll be neist ook, or thereabouts, or aiblins twa days efter. I'll hae some leiser than.'

Before he had finished speaking he had caught up his awl and begun to work vigorously, boring his holes as if the nerves of feeling were continued to the point of the tool, inserting the bristles that served him for needles with a delicacy worthy of soft-skinned fingers, drawing through the rosined threads with a whisk, and untwining them with a crack from the leather that guarded his hands.

'Gude nicht to ye,' said Robert, with the fiddle-case under his arm.

The shoemaker looked up, with his hands bound in his threads.

'Ye're no gaein' to tak her frae me the nicht?'

'Ay am I, but I'll fess her back again. I'm no gaein' to Jericho wi' her.'

'Gang to Hecklebirnie wi' her, and that's three mile ayont hell.'

'Na; we maun win farther nor that. There canna, be muckle fiddlin' there.'

'Weel, tak her to the new Jeroozlem. I s' gang doon to Lucky Leary's, and fill mysel' roarin' fou, an' it'll be a' your wyte (blame).'

'I doobt ye'll get the straiks (blows) though. Or maybe ye think Bell 'ill tak them for ye.'

Dooble Sanny caught up a huge boot, the sole of which was filled with broad-headed nails as thick as they could be driven, and, in a rage, threw it at Robert as he darted out. Through its clang against the door-cheek, the shoemaker heard a cry from the instrument. He cast everything from him and sprang after Robert. But Robert was down the wynd like a long-legged grayhound, and Elshender could only follow like a fierce mastiff. It was love and grief, though, and apprehension and remorse, not vengeance, that winged his heels. He soon saw that pursuit was vain.

'Robert! Robert!' he cried; 'I canna win up wi' ye. Stop, for God's sake! Is she hurtit?'

Robert stopped at once.

'Ye hae made a bonny leddy o' her—a lameter (cripple) I doobt, like yer wife,' he answered, with indignation.

'Dinna be aye flingin' a man's fau'ts in 's face. It jist maks him 'at he canna, bide himsel' or you eyther. Lat's see the bonny crater.'

Robert complied, for he too was anxious. They were now standing in the space in front of Shargar's old abode, and there was no one to be seen. Elshender took the box, opened it carefully, and peeped in with a face of great apprehension.

'I thocht that was a'!' he said with some satisfaction. 'I kent the string whan I heard it. But we'll sune get a new thairm till her,' he added, in a tone of sorrowful commiseration and condolence, as he took the violin from the case, tenderly as if it had been a hurt child.

One touch of the bow, drawing out a goul of grief, satisfied him that she was uninjured. Next a hurried inspection showed him that there was enough of the catgut twisted round the peg to make up for the part that was broken off. In a moment he had fastened it to the tail-piece, tightened and tuned it. Forthwith he took the bow from the case-lid, and in jubilant guise he expatiated upon the wrong he had done his bonny leddy, till the doors and windows around were crowded with heads peering through the dark to see whence the sounds came, and a little child toddled across from one of the lowliest houses with a ha'penny for the fiddler. Gladly would Robert have restored it with interest, but, alas! there was no interest in his bank, for not a ha'penny had he in the world. The incident recalled Sandy to Rothieden and its cares. He restored the violin to its case, and while Robert was fearing he would take it under his arm and walk away with it, handed it back with a humble sigh and a 'Praise be thankit;' then, without another word, turned and went to his lonely stool and home 'untreasured of its mistress.' Robert went home too, and stole like a thief to his room.

The next day was a Saturday, which, indeed, was the real old Sabbath, or at least the half of it, to the schoolboys of Rothieden. Even Robert's grannie was Jew enough, or rather Christian enough, to respect this remnant of the fourth commandment—divine antidote to the rest of the godless money-making and soul-saving week—and he had the half-day to himself. So as soon as he had had his dinner, he managed to give Shargar the slip, left him to the inroads of a desolate despondency, and stole away to the old factory-garden. The key of that he had managed to purloin from the kitchen where it hung; nor was there much danger of its absence being discovered, seeing that in winter no one thought of the garden. The smuggling of the violin out of the house was the 'dearest danger'—the more so that he would not run the risk of carrying her out unprotected, and it was altogether a bulky venture with the case. But by spying and speeding he managed it, and soon found himself safe within the high walls of the garden.

It was early spring. There had been a heavy fall of sleet in the morning, and now the wind blew gustfully about the place. The neglected trees shook showers upon him as he passed under them, trampling down the rank growth of the grass-walks. The long twigs of the wall-trees, which had never been nailed up, or had been torn down by the snow and the blasts of winter, went trailing away in the moan of the fitful wind, and swung back as it sunk to a sigh. The currant and gooseberry bushes, bare and leafless, and 'shivering all for cold,' neither reminded him of the feasts of the past summer, nor gave him any hope for the next. He strode careless through it all to gain the door at the bottom. It yielded to a push, and the long grass streamed in over the threshold as he entered. He mounted by a broad stair in the main part of the house, passing the silent clock in one of its corners, now expiating in motionlessness the false accusations it had brought against the work-people, and turned into the chaos of machinery.

I fear that my readers will expect, from the minuteness with which I recount these particulars, that, after all, I am going to describe a rendezvous with a lady, or a ghost at least. I will not plead in excuse that I, too, have been infected with Sandy's mode of regarding her, but I plead that in the mind of Robert the proceeding was involved in something of that awe and mystery with which a youth approaches the woman he loves. He had not yet arrived at the period when the feminine assumes its paramount influence, combining in itself all that music, colour, form, odour, can suggest, with something infinitely higher and more divine; but he had begun to be haunted with some vague aspirations towards the infinite, of which his attempts on the violin were the outcome. And now that he was to be alone, for the first time, with this wonderful realizer of dreams and awakener of visions, to do with her as he would, to hint by gentle touches at the thoughts that were fluttering in his soul, and listen for her voice that by the echoes in which she strove to respond he might know that she understood him, it was no wonder if he felt an ethereal foretaste of the expectation that haunts the approach of souls.

But I am not even going to describe his first tete-a-tete with his violin. Perhaps he returned from it somewhat disappointed. Probably he found her coy, unready to acknowledge his demands on her attention. But not the less willingly did he return with her to the solitude of the ruinous factory. On every safe occasion, becoming more and more frequent as the days grew longer, he repaired thither, and every time returned more capable of drawing the coherence of melody from that matrix of sweet sounds.

At length the people about began to say that the factory was haunted; that the ghost of old Mr. Falconer, unable to repose while neglect was ruining the precious results of his industry, visited the place night after night, and solaced his disappointment by renewing on his favourite violin strains not yet forgotten by him in his grave, and remembered well by those who had been in his service, not a few of whom lived in the neighbourhood of the forsaken building.

One gusty afternoon, like the first, but late in the spring, Robert repaired as usual to this his secret haunt. He had played for some time, and now, from a sudden pause of impulse, had ceased, and begun to look around him. The only light came from two long pale cracks in the rain-clouds of the west. The wind was blowing through the broken windows, which stretched away on either hand. A dreary, windy gloom, therefore, pervaded the desolate place; and in the dusk, and their settled order, the machines looked multitudinous. An eerie sense of discomfort came over him as he gazed, and he lifted his violin to dispel the strange unpleasant feeling that grew upon him. But at the first long stroke across the strings, an awful sound arose in the further room; a sound that made him all but drop the bow, and cling to his violin. It went on. It was the old, all but forgotten whirr of bobbins, mingled with the gentle groans of the revolving horizontal wheel, but magnified in the silence of the place, and the echoing imagination of the boy, into something preternaturally awful. Yielding for a moment to the growth of goose-skin, and the insurrection of hair, he recovered himself by a violent effort, and walked to the door that connected the two compartments. Was it more or less fearful that the jenny was not going of itself? that the figure of an old woman sat solemnly turning and turning the hand-wheel? Not without calling in the jury of his senses, however, would he yield to the special plea of his imagination, but went nearer, half expecting to find that the mutch, with its big flapping borders, glimmering white in the gloom across many a machine, surrounded the face of a skull. But he was soon satisfied that it was only a blind woman everybody knew—so old that she had become childish. She had heard the reports of the factory being haunted, and groping about with her half-withered brain full of them, had found the garden and the back door open, and had climbed to the first-floor by a farther stair, well known to her when she used to work that very machine. She had seated herself instinctively, according to ancient wont, and had set it in motion once more.

Yielding to an impulse of experiment, Robert began to play again. Thereupon her disordered ideas broke out in words. And Robert soon began to feel that it could hardly be more ghastly to look upon a ghost than to be taken for one.

'Ay, ay, sir,' said the old woman, in a tone of commiseration, 'it maun be sair to bide. I dinna wonner 'at ye canna lie still. But what gars ye gang daunerin' aboot this place? It's no yours ony langer. Ye ken whan fowk's deid, they tyne the grip (loose hold). Ye suld gang hame to yer wife. She micht say a word to quaiet yer auld banes, for she's a douce an' a wice woman—the mistress.'

Then followed a pause. There was a horror about the old woman's voice, already half dissolved by death, in the desolate place, that almost took from Robert the power of motion. But his violin sent forth an accidental twang, and that set her going again.

'Ye was aye a douce honest gentleman yersel', an' I dinna wonner ye canna bide it. But I wad hae thoucht glory micht hae hauden ye in. But yer ain son! Eh ay! And a braw lad and a bonnie! It's a sod thing he bude to gang the wrang gait; and it's no wonner, as I say, that ye lea' the worms to come an' luik efter him. I doobt—I doobt it winna be to you he'll gang at the lang last. There winna be room for him aside ye in Awbrahawm's boasom. And syne to behave sae ill to that winsome wife o' his! I dinna wonner 'at ye maun be up! Eh na! But, sir, sin ye are up, I wish ye wad speyk to John Thamson no to tak aff the day 'at I was awa' last ook, for 'deed I was verra unweel, and bude to keep my bed.'

Robert was beginning to feel uneasy as to how he should get rid of her, when she rose, and saying, 'Ay, ay, I ken it's sax o'clock,' went out as she had come in. Robert followed, and saw her safe out of the garden, but did not return to the factory.

So his father had behaved ill to his mother too!

'But what for hearken to the havers o' a dottled auld wife?' he said to himself, pondering as he walked home.

Old Janet told a strange story of how she had seen the ghost, and had had a long talk with him, and of what he said, and of how he groaned and played the fiddle between. And finding that the report had reached his grandmother's ears, Robert thought it prudent, much to his discontent, to intermit his visits to the factory. Mrs. Falconer, of course, received the rumour with indignant scorn, and peremptorily refused to allow any examination of the premises.

But how have the violin by him and not hear her speak? One evening the longing after her voice grow upon him till he could resist it no longer. He shut the door of his garret-room, and, with Shargar by him, took her out and began to play softly, gently—oh so softly, so gently! Shargar was enraptured. Robert went on playing.

Suddenly the door opened, and his grannie stood awfully revealed before them. Betty had heard the violin, and had flown to the parlour in the belief that, unable to get any one to heed him at the factory, the ghost had taken Janet's advice, and come home. But his wife smiled a smile of contempt, went with Betty to the kitchen—over which Robert's room lay—heard the sounds, put off her creaking shoes, stole up-stairs on her soft white lambswool stockings, and caught the pair. The violin was seized, put in its case, and carried off; and Mrs. Falconer rejoiced to think she had broken a gin set by Satan for the unwary feet of her poor Robert. Little she knew the wonder of that violin—how it had kept the soul of her husband alive! Little she knew how dangerous it is to shut an open door, with ever so narrow a peep into the eternal, in the face of a son of Adam! And little she knew how determinedly and restlessly a nature like Robert's would search for another, to open one possibly which she might consider ten times more dangerous than that which she had closed.

When Alexander heard of the affair, he was at first overwhelmed with the misfortune; but gathering a little heart at last, he set to 'working,' as he said himself, 'like a verra deevil'; and as he was the best shoemaker in the town, and for the time abstained utterly from whisky, and all sorts of drink but well-water, he soon managed to save the money necessary, and redeem the old fiddle. But whether it was from fancy, or habit, or what, even Robert's inexperienced ear could not accommodate itself, save under protest, to the instrument which once his teacher had considered all but perfect; and it needed the master's finest touch to make its tone other than painful to the sense of the neophyte.

No one can estimate too highly the value of such a resource to a man like the shoemaker, or a boy like Robert. Whatever it be that keeps the finer faculties of the mind awake, wonder alive, and the interest above mere eating and drinking, money-making and money-saving; whatever it be that gives gladness, or sorrow, or hope—this, be it violin, pencil, pen, or, highest of all, the love of woman, is simply a divine gift of holy influence for the salvation of that being to whom it comes, for the lifting of him out of the mire and up on the rock. For it keeps a way open for the entrance of deeper, holier, grander influences, emanating from the same riches of the Godhead. And though many have genius that have no grace, they will only be so much the worse, so much the nearer to the brute, if you take from them that which corresponds to Dooble Sanny's fiddle.



CHAPTER XII. ROBERT'S PLAN OF SALVATION.

For some time after the loss of his friend, Robert went loitering and mooning about, quite neglecting the lessons to which he had not, it must be confessed, paid much attention for many weeks. Even when seated at his grannie's table, he could do no more than fix his eyes on his book: to learn was impossible; it was even disgusting to him. But his was a nature which, foiled in one direction, must, absolutely helpless against its own vitality, straightway send out its searching roots in another. Of all forces, that of growth is the one irresistible, for it is the creating power of God, the law of life and of being. Therefore no accumulation of refusals, and checks, and turnings, and forbiddings, from all the good old grannies in the world, could have prevented Robert from striking root downward, and bearing fruit upward, though, as in all higher natures, the fruit was a long way off yet. But his soul was only sad and hungry. He was not unhappy, for he had been guilty of nothing that weighed on his conscience. He had been doing many things of late, it is true, without asking leave of his grandmother, but wherever prayer is felt to be of no avail, there cannot be the sense of obligation save on compulsion. Even direct disobedience in such case will generally leave little soreness, except the thing forbidden should be in its own nature wrong, and then, indeed, 'Don Worm, the conscience,' may begin to bite. But Robert felt nothing immoral in playing upon his grandfather's violin, nor even in taking liberties with a piece of lumber for which nobody cared but possibly the dead; therefore he was not unhappy, only much disappointed, very empty, and somewhat gloomy. There was nothing to look forward to now, no secret full of riches and endless in hope—in short, no violin.

To feel the full force of his loss, my reader must remember that around the childhood of Robert, which he was fast leaving behind him, there had gathered no tenderness—none at least by him recognizable as such. All the women he came in contact with were his grandmother and Betty. He had no recollection of having ever been kissed. From the darkness and negation of such an embryo-existence, his nature had been unconsciously striving to escape—struggling to get from below ground into the sunlit air—sighing after a freedom he could not have defined, the freedom that comes, not of independence, but of love—not of lawlessness, but of the perfection of law. Of this beauty of life, with its wonder and its deepness, this unknown glory, his fiddle had been the type. It had been the ark that held, if not the tables of the covenant, yet the golden pot of angel's food, and the rod that budded in death. And now that it was gone, the gloomier aspect of things began to lay hold upon him; his soul turned itself away from the sun, and entered into the shadow of the under-world. Like the white-horsed twins of lake Regillus, like Phoebe, the queen of skyey plain and earthly forest, every boy and girl, every man and woman, that lives at all, has to divide many a year between Tartarus and Olympus.