12 Robert's Plan of Salvation For some time after the loss of his friend, Robert went loitering and moaning 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 granny'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 straight away 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. For 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 burying 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, dawn-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 the 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 angels' food and the rod that butted it 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 underworld. Like the white-horse twins of Lake Regillus, like Phoebe, the queen of Skyy Plain and Earthly Forest, every boy and girl, every man and woman, that lives it all, has to divide many a year between Tartarus and Olympus. For now arose within him, not without ultimate good, the evil phantasms of a theology which would explain all God's doings by low conceptions. Low I mean for humanity even, of right, and law, and justice, than only taking refuge in the fact of the incapacity of the human understanding, when its own inventions are impugned as undivine.  Hence, as foundations must be laid in the deepest, the system is founded in hell, and the first article in the creed that Robert Falconer learned was, I believe in hell. Mostly I mean, it was so, else how should it be that as often as a thought of religious duty arose in his mind, it appeared in the form of escaping hell, of fleeing from the wrath to come. For his very nature was hell, being not born in sin and brought forth in iniquity, but born sin and brought forth iniquity. And yet God made him, he must believe that, and he must believe too that God was just, awfully just, punishing with fearful pains those who did not go through a certain process of mind, which it was utterly impossible they should go through without a help, which he would give to some and withhold from others, the reason of the difference not being such, to say the least of it, as to come within the reach of the person's concern. And this God, they said, was love. It was logically absurd, of course, yet, thank God, they did say that God was love. Many of them succeeded in believing it, too, and in ordering their ways as if the first article of their creed had been, I believe in God, whence in truth we are bound to say it was the first in power and reality, if not in order, for what are we to say a man believes, if not what he acts upon? Still the former article was the one they brought chiefly to bear upon their children. This mortar, probably, they thought, threw the shell straighter than any of the other field pieces of the church militant. Hence it was, even in justification of God himself, that a party arose to say that a man could believe without the help of God at all, and after believing only began to receive God's help. I heresy all but as dreary and barren as the former. Not one dreamed of saying, at least such a glad word of prophecy never reached Therothadin, that while nobody can do without the help of the Father any more than a new born babe could of itself live and grow to a man, yet that in the giving of that help the very Fatherhood of the Father finds its one gladsome labor, that for the Lord came for that the world was made, for that we were born into it, for that God lives and loves like the most loving man or woman on earth, only infinitely more and in other ways and kinds besides, which we cannot understand, and that therefore to be a man is the soul of eternal jubilation. Robert consequently began to take fits of soul-saving, a most rational exercise, worldly wise and prudent. Right, too, on the principles he had received, but not in the least Christian in its nature or even God-fearing. His imagination began to busy itself in representing the dire consequences of not entering into the one refuge of faith. He made many frantic efforts to believe that he believed, took to keeping the Sabbath very carefully, that is by going to church three times and to Sunday school as well, by never walking a step saved to or from church, by never saying a word upon any subject unconnected with religion, chiefly theoretical, by never reading any but religious books, by never whistling, by never thinking of his lost fiddle, and so on. All the time feeling that God was ready to pounce upon him if he failed once, till again and again the intensity of his efforts utterly defeated their object by destroying for the time the desire to prosecute them with the power to will them. But through the horrible vapors of these vain endeavors which denied God altogether as the maker of the world, and the former of his soul and heart and brain, and sought to worship him as a capricious demon, there broke a little light, a little soothing, soft twilight from the dim windows of such literature as came in his way. Besides the pilgrim's progress there were several books which shone moonlight on his darkness, and lifted something of the weight of that Egyptian gloom off his spirits. One of these strange to say was Defoe's religious courtship, and one Young's night thoughts. But there was another which deserves particular notice in as much as it did far more than merely interest or amuse him, raising a deep question in his mind, and one worthy to be asked. This book was the translation of Kloppstock's Messiah, to which I have already referred. It was not one of his grandmother's books, but had probably belonged to his father. He had found it in his little garret room, but as often as she saw him reading it she seemed rather pleased, he thought. As to the book itself, its florid expiation could neither offend nor injure a boy like Robert. While its representation of our Lord was to him a wonderful relief from that given in the pulpit, and in all the religious books he knew. But the point for the sake of which I refer to it in particular is this. Amongst the rebel angels who are of the actors in the story, one of the principal is a cherub who repents of making his choice with Satan, mourns over his apostasy, haunts unseen the steps of our Saviour, wheels lamenting about the cross, and would gladly return to his lost duties in heaven, if only he might. A doubt which I believe is left unsolved in the volume, and naturally enough remained unsolved in Robert's mind. Would poor Abaddon be forgiven and taken home again? For although naturally, that is, to judge by his own instincts, there could be no question of his forgiveness, according to what he had been taught, there could be no question of his perdition. Having no one to talk to, he divided himself and went to Buffett's on the subject. Waiting, of course, with the better half of himself, which supported the merciful view of the matter. For all his efforts at keeping the Sabbath had, in his own honest judgment, failed so entirely that he had no ground for believing himself one of the elect. Had he succeeded in persuading himself that he was, there is no sane to what lengths of indifference about others the chosen preg might have advanced by this time. He made one attempt to open the subject with Shargar. —Shargar, what think ye? He said suddenly one day. Given a devil war to repent, would God forgive him? —There's no sane what folk would do till aunts there tried, replied Shargar cautiously. Robert did not care to resume the question with one who so circumspectly refused to take a metaphysical or a priori view of the matter. He made an attempt with his grandmother. One Sunday his thoughts, after trying for a time to revolve in due orbit around the mind of Reverend Hugh McClary, as projected in a sermon which he had botched up out of a commentary, failed at last and flew off into what said gentleman would have pronounced very dangerous speculation, seeing no man is to go beyond what is written in the Bible which contains not only the truth, but the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For this time and for all future time, both here and in the world to come. Some such sentence at least was in his sermon that day, and the preacher no doubt supposed St. Matthew, not St. Matthew Henry, accountable for its origination. In the limbo into which Robert's spirit then flew, it had been sorely exercised about the substitution of the sufferings of Christ for those which humanity must else have endured while ages rolled on, mere ripples on the ocean of eternity. "'Noo, be quiet,' said Mrs. Falconer solemnly, as Robert, a trifle lighter at heart from the result of his cogitations than usual, sat down to dinner. He had happened to smile across the table to Shargar, and he was quiet, and smiled no more. They ate their broth, or, more properly, supped it, with horned spoons, in absolute silence, after which Mrs. Falconer put a large piece of meat on the plate of each, with the same formula, have, ease, get, nay more. The allowance was ample in the extreme, bearing a relation to her words similar to that which her practice bore to her theology. A piece of cheese, because it was the Sabbath, followed, and dinner was over. When the table had been cleared by Betty, they drew their chairs to the fire, and Robert had to read to his grandmother while Shargar sat listening. He had not read long, however, before he looked up from his Bible, and began the following conversation. Was not it an ill trick of Joseph's grandmother to put that cup and a cellar on two into the mouth of Benjamin's sack? What for that, laddie? He wanted to guard them, come back again, you can. But he need not have kin aboot it in such a play actor like Gait. He need not have letten them away without telling them that he was their brother. They had behaved very ill to him. He used to tell tales upon them, though. Laddie, take ye care what ye say about Joseph, for he was a type of Christ. Who was that grandmother? They sell it to him to the Ishmaelettes for silver, as Judas did to him. Did he bear the sins of them that sell to him? Ye may say in a manner that he did, for he was so afflicted afore he won't up to be the king's right hand, and sign he keep it a handle of ill off of his brother. Say, grandmother, other folk, nor Christ, might suffer for the sins of their neighbors. I, laddie, many a one has to do that. But know to make atonement ye can. Nothing but the suffering of the spotless could do that. The Lord would not be set his feet with less nor that. It might be the innocent to suffer for the guilty. I understand that, said Robert, who had heard it so often that he had not yet thought of trying to understand it. But given we gone to the good place, we'll be all innocent, though not we, granny. I, that we will, wash spotless and pure and clean and dressed in the weeding garment, and set doing at the table with him and with his father. That's them it believes in him ye can. Of course, granny. Well, ye see, I have been thinking of a plan for almost empty in hell. What's in the baron's head, Nul? Trial to your no-blade and meddling with such subjects, laddie? I did not want to say anything to vex ye, granny. I was gone with the chapter. I'll say away. Ye cannot say muckle, that's wrong afore I cry, hold! said Mrs. Falconer, curious to know what had been moving in the boy's mind, but watching him like a cat, ready to spring upon the first visible hair of the old atom. And Robert, recalling the outbreak of terrible grief which he had heard on that memorable night, really thought that his project would bring comfort to a mind burdened with such care, and went on with the exposition of his plan. All them at sits do unto the supper of the lamb will sit there, because Christ suffered the punishment due to their sins. Will not they, granny? Do it to the sladdie?  We'll put that in your head, laddie, there's no reason to think at hell's so near heaven as all that, to lord forbid it. Well, but, granny, they'll know all the same whether they smell it or new, and I cannot help thinking that the farther away I thought they were the were I would like to think upon them. Did it would be war? What are ye drivin' at, laddie? I cannot understand ye, said Mrs. Falconer, feeling very uncomfortable, and yet curious, almost anxious to hear what would come next. I trust we will not have to think muckle. But here I presume the thought of the added desolation of her Andrew, if she too were to forget him, as well as his father in heaven, checked the flow of her words. She paused, and Robert took up his parable and went on, first with yet another question. Do ye think, granny, that a body would be allude to spake a word in public like there, at the long table, like I mean? Well, for now if it was done with modesty, and for good reason. But, Raleigh, laddie, I doot your haverin' altogether. Ye hard nothin' like that, I'm sure the day for Mr. McCleary. Nay, nay, he said nothin' about it, but maybe I'll go on and spare it him, though. What a boot! What I'm goin' to tell ye, granny? Well tell away, and have done with it. I'm goin' tired of it. It was somethin' else than tired she was growin'. Well, I was goin' to try all that I can to win in there. I hope ye will, strive and pray, resist the devil, walk in the lake, lippin' not to yourself, but trust in Christ and his salvation. Aye, aye, granny, well, are ye not done yet? Nah, I'm but just beginin'. Beginin' are ye, honf. Well, if I win in there the very first night I sit down with the love of them, I'm goin' to rise up and say, that is, if the mastee at the head of the table does not bid me sit down, and say, Brothers and sisters, the whole of ye hearken to me for a minute, and all Lord, if I say wrong, just take the speech from me, and I'll sit down dumb and rebuke it. Where I hear, by grace, and know by merit, save his, as ye all can better, nor I can tell ye, for ye have been longer here nor me. But it's just rugged and riven at my heart to think of them as doin' there. Maybe ye can hear them. I cannot. No, we have no merit, and they have no merit. And what for are we here in them there? But we're washed clean and innocent, new, and new, when there's no white line upon ourselves, it seems to me that we might bear some of the sins of them, and have more many. I call upon ilk one of ye, and has a friend or a neighbor down yonder, to rise up and taste, nor bite, nor sup more, till we go on up altogether to the foot of the throne, and pray the Lord to let's go on, and do as the master did for us, and bear their griefs, and carry their sorrows doin' and held there, if it may be that they may repent, and get remission of their sins, and come up here with us at the long last, and sit doin' with us at the table, and throw the merits of our Savior, Jesus Christ, at the head of the table there. Amen. Both ashamed of his long speech, half overcome by the feelings fighting within them, and altogether bewildered, Robert burst out crying like a baby, and ran out of the room, up to his own place of meditation, where he threw himself on the floor. Shargar, who had made neither head nor tail of it all, as he said afterward, sat staring at Mrs. Falconer. She rose, and going into Robert's little bedroom, closed the door, and what she did there is not far to seek. When she came out, she rang the bell for tea, and sent Shargar to look for Robert. When he appeared, she was so gentle to him that it woke quite a new sensation in him. But after tea was over, she said, No, Robert, let's have name more of this. He can's as well as I do, that them at Gaon's there, their doom is fixed, and nothing can alter it. And we're not to lue our own fancies to carry us a yawned descriptor. We have our own salvation to work with with fear and trembling. We have nothing to do with what's hidden. Look ye till it, at ye win in yourself. That's enough for you to mind. Shargar, ye can go on to the Kirk. Robert's to bide with me the night. Mrs. Falconer very rarely went to church, for she could not hear a word, and found it irksome. When Robert, and she were alone together. Ladi, she said, Be ye war of judge and all, Myxi. What looks to you all wrong may be all right. But it's true enough that we do not ken a thing, and he's no dead yet. I do not believe it he is, and he'll maybe win in yet. Here her voice failed her, and Robert had nothing to say now. He had said all his say before. Pray, Robert. Pray for your father, Ladi, she resumed. For we have Mako risen to be anxious about him. Pray while there is life and hope. Give the Lord no rest. Pray till him day and night, as I do, that he would lead him to see the air of his ways, and turn to the Lord, who is ready to pardon. If your mother had lived, I would have had more hope, I confess, for she was a bra Ladi and a Bonnie, and that's sweet-tongued. She could have wild amokened from its lair with her Bonnie Highland's speech. I never liked it to hear none of them spake the Irish, that is Gaelic. It was eye-so-gloggy and painless, and I could not understand a word of it. Name more could your father, Hood, your grandfather, I mean, though his father could spake it well. But to hear your mother, Mama, as you used to all call her eye, after the new fashion, to hear her spake English, that was sweet to the ear, for the broad scotch he kent as little of as I do of the Gaelic. It was heart's caribut him that shortened her days, and all that will be laid upon him.  O'chon, o'chon, ha' Robert, my man, be a good lad, and serve the Lord with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. For giving you gone wrong, your own father will have to bear nobody kent's humacle of the white of it, for he's done nothing to bring ye up in the way ye should go on, and hold ye out of the ill-gate. For the sake of your poor father, hold ye to the right road. It may spare him a pang or two in the ill-place, and given the Lord would only take me and let him gone. Involuntarily and unconsciously the mother's love was adopting the hope which she had denounced in her grandson, and Robert saw it, but he was never the man when I knew him to push a victory. He said nothing, only a tear or two at the memory of the way warned man, his recollection of whose visit I have already recorded rolled down his cheeks. He was at such a distance from him, such an impassable gulf yawned between them. That was the grief, not the gulf of death nor the gulf that divides hell from heaven, but the gulf of abjuration by the good because of his evil ways. His grandmother, herself weeping fast and silently, with scarce altered countenance, took her neatly folded handkerchief from her pocket, and wiped her grandson's fresh cheeks, then wiped her own withered face, and from that moment Robert knew that he loved her. Then followed the Sabbath evening prayer that she always offered with the boy. Whichever he was, who kept her company, they knelt down together side by side in a certain corner of the room, the same I doubt not in which she knelt at her private devotions before going to bed. There she uttered a long extemper prayer, rapid in speech, full of divinity and scripture phrases, but not the lust earnest and simple, for it flowed from a heart of faith. Then Robert had to pray, after her, loud in her ear, that she might hear him thoroughly, so that he often felt as if he were praying to her, and not to God at all. He had begun to teach him to pray so early that the custom reached beyond the confines of his memory. At first he had to repeat the words after her, but soon she made him construct his own utterances, now and then giving him a suggestion, in the form of a petition, when he seemed likely to break down or putting a phrase into what she considered more suitable language. But all such assistance she had given up long ago. On the present occasion she had ended her petitions, like those for Jews and Pagans, and especially for the pulp of Rome, in whom, with a rare liberality, she took the kindest interest. She turned to Robert with the usual. New Robert, and Robert began. But after he had gone on for some time with the ordinary phrases, he turned all at once into a new track, and instead of praying in general terms for those that would not walk in the right way, said, O Lord, save my father! And there paused. If it be thy will, suggested his grandmother. But Robert continued silent. His grandmother repeated the subjunctive clause. I'm trying, grandmother, said Robert, but I cannot say it. I dare not say it, if aboot it. It would be like gleaning in till his damnation. We mount have him saved, Granny. Laddy, laddy, hold your tongue, said Mrs. Falconer, in a tone of distressed awe. O Lord, forgive him. He's young and does not know better yet. He cannot understand thy ways, nor for that matter can I pretend to understand them myself. But do art alight, and in thee is no darkness at all, and thy light comes into our blind eye, and makes them bliner yet. But, O Lord, if it would please thee to hear our prayer, who we would praise thee, and my Andrew would praise thee more nor ninety-and-nine of them at need-nay repentance. A long pause followed, and then the only words that would come were, for Christ's sake, amen. When she said that God was light, instead of concluding therefrom, that he could not do the deeds of darkness, she was driven from a faith in the teaching of Jonathan Edwards as implicit as that of any laypapist of Loretto, to doubt whether the deeds of darkness were not, after all, deeds of light, or at least to conclude that their character depended not on their own nature, but on who did them.  And when the world to come arose before her, clad in all the glories which her fancy, chilled by education in years, could supply, it was but to vanish in the gloom of the remembrance of him with whom she dared not hope to share its blessedness. This at least was how Falconer afterwards interpreted the sudden changes from gladness to gloom which he saw at such times on her countenance. But while such a small portion of the universe of thought was enlightened by the glowworm lamp of the theories she had been taught, she was not limited for light to that fuel's source. While she walked on her way, the moon, unseen herself behind the clouds, was illuminating the whole landscape so gently and evenly that the glowworm being the only visible point of radiance, to it she attributed all the light. But she felt bound to go on believing as she had been taught. For some time the most original mind has the strongest sense of law upon it, and will, in default of a better, obey a beggarly one, only till the higher law that swallows it up manifests itself. Obedience was as essential an element of her creed as of that of any purist-minded monk. Neither being sufficiently impressed with this, that while obedience is the law of the kingdom, it is of considerable importance that that which is obeyed should be in very truth the will of God. It is one thing and a good thing to do for God's sake that which is not his will. It is another thing and altogether a better thing, how much better no words can tell, to do for God's sake that which is his will. Mrs. Falconer's submission and obedience led her to accept as the will of God, lest she should be guilty of opposition to him, that which it was anything but giving him honor to accept as such. Therefore her love to God was too like the love of the slave or the dog, too little like the love of the child, with whose obedience the father cannot be satisfied until he cares for his reason as the highest form of his will. True the child who most faithfully desires to know the inward will or reason of the father will be the most ready to obey without it. Only for this obedience it is essential that the apparent command at least be such as he can suppose attributable to the father. Of his own self he is bound to judge what is right, as the Lord said. Had Abraham doubted whether it was in any case right to slay his son, he would have been justified in doubting whether God really required it of him, and would have been bound to delay action until the arrival of more light. True the will of God can never be other than good, but I doubt if any man can ever be sure that a thing is the will of God, saved by seeing into its nature and character and beholding its goodness. Whatever God does must be right, but are we sure that we know what he does? That which men say he does may be very wrong indeed. This burden she and her turn laid upon Robert, not unkindly, but as needful for his training towards well-being. Her way with him was shaped after that which she recognized as God's way with her. Spare nay questions, but go on, do as your tell it. And it was anything but a bad lesson for the boy. It was one of the best he could have had, that of authority. It is a grand thing to obey without asking questions, so long as there is nothing evil in what is commanded. Only Granny concealed her reasons without reason, and God makes no secrets, hence she seemed more stern and less sympathetic than she really was. She sat with her feet on the little wooden stool, and Robert sat beside her, staring into the fire, till they heard the outer door open, and Shargar and Betty come in from church. CHAPTER XIII Early on the following morning, while Mrs. Falconer, Robert and Shargar were at breakfast, Mr. Lambie came. He had delayed communicating the intelligence he had received, till he should be more certain of its truth. Older than Andrew, he had been a great friend of his father, and likewise of some of Mrs. Falconer's own family. Therefore he was received with a kindly welcome. But there was a cloud on his brow which, in a moment, revealed that his errand was not a pleasant one. I had not seen you for a long time, Mr. Lambie. Go about the horse lads, or I'm thinking a mound-by-school time. Sit you doing, Mr. Lambie, and let's hear your news. I came from Aberdeen last night, Mr. S. Falconer. He began. You have not been home since sign, she rejoined. Nay, I sleep it at the boar's head. What for did you that? What guard ye be at that expense? When ye can, I had a bed in the gale room. Well ye see, they're old friends of mine, and I like to go on to them when I'm in the gait of it. Well they're a fine family, the Miss Napiers, and I watch, and they mount cell-drink. They do it with discretion, that's well can't. Possibly Mr. Lambie, remembering what then occurred, may have thought the discretion a little in excess of the drink. But he had other matters to occupy him now. For a few moments, both were silent. There's been some ill news, they tell me, Mrs. Falconer. He said at length, when the silence had grown painful. Humpf! Return the old lady, her face becoming stony with the effort to suppress all emotion. Nay, but Andrew, deed is it, ma'am, in ill news, I'm sorry to say. Is he taken? I is he, by a giler, that will not loose the grip. He's no dead, John Lambie, do not say it. I mount say it, Mrs. Falconer. I had it from Dr. Anderson, your own cousin. He hinted at it a four, but his last letter leaves nay room to do it upon the subject. I'm uncle sorry to be bearer of such ill news, Mrs. Falconer, but I had no choice. Ahon! Ahon! The day of crisis, by at last, ma'am, poor Andrew, exclaimed Mrs. Falconer, and sat down thereafter. Mr. Lambie tried to comfort her with some of the usual, comfortless, common places. She neither wept nor replied, but sat with stony face staring into her lap, till seeing that she was, as one that hereeth not, he rose and left her alone with her grief. A few minutes after he was gone, she rang the bell, and told Betty in her usual voice to send Robert to her. He's gone to the school, ma'am, ring after him, and tell him to come home. When Robert appeared, wondering what his grandmother could want with him, she said, Close the door, Robert.  We might not leave him o'ed new. Leave what o'ed, Granny? Him, him, Andrew, your father, laddie, I think my heart will break. Leave him o'ed of what, Granny? I did not understand ye. Leave him o'ed of our prayers, laddie, and I cannot bide it. What for that? He's dead. Are ye sure? I are sure, or sure, laddie. Well, I did not believe it. What for that? Because I will not believe it. I'm no bond to believe it, am I? What's the good of that? What for no believe it? Dr. Anderson sent home word of it to John Lambie. O'chon, o'chon! I tell ye, I will not believe it, Granny, except God himself tells me. As long as I did not believe that he's dead, I can keep him in my prayers. I'm no bond to leave him o'ed, I tell ye, Granny. Well, laddie, I cannot argue with ye. I have near heart to it. I do not amount great. Come away.  Robert bolted the door, and his grandmother, again taking his hand, led him to the usual corner. There they knelt down together, and the old woman's prayer was one great and bitter cry for submission to the divine will. She rose a little strengthened, if not comforted, saying, Eamon, pray your lawn, laddie, but oh, be a good lad, for ye are all that I have left, and if ye go on wrong, too, ye'll bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. They're gray enough, and they're near enough to the grave, but if ye turn old well, I'll maybe hold up my head a bit yet, but oh, Andrew, my son, my son, would ye God I had died for thee? And the words of her brother in grief, the king of Israel, opened the floodgates of her heart, and she wabbed. Robert left her weeping and closed the door quietly, as if his dead father had been lying in the room. He took his way up to his own garret, closed that door, too, and sat down upon the floor with his back against the empty bedstead. There were no more castles to build now. It was all very well to say that he would not believe the news, and would pray for his father, but he did believe them, enough at least to spoil the praying. His favorite employment, seated there, had hitherto been to imagine how he would grow a great man, and set out to seek his father and find him, and stand by him, and be his son and servant. Oh, to have the man stroke his head and pat his cheek, and love him. One moment he imagined himself his indignant defender, the next he would be climbing on his knee as if he were still a little child, and laying his head on his shoulder, for he had had no fondling his life long, and his heart yearned for it. But all this was gone now, a very time lay before him, with nobody to please, nobody to serve, with nobody to praise him. Granny never praised him, she must have thought praise something wicked, and his father was in misery for ever and ever, only somehow that thought was not quite thinkable. It was more the vanishing of hope from his own life than a sense of his father's fate that oppressed him. He cast his eyes, as in a hungry despair, around the empty room, for rather I should have said, in that faintness which makes food at once essential and loathsome. For despair has no proper hunger in it. The room seemed as empty as his life. There was nothing for his eyes to rest upon, but those bundles and bundles of dust-brown papers on the shelves before him. What were they all about? He understood that they were his father's now, that he was dead, it would be no sacrilege to look at them, nobody cared about them. He would see at least what they were. It would be something to do in this dreariness. Bills and receipts and everything ephemeral, to feel the interest of which a man must be a poet indeed, was all that met his view. Bundle after bundle he tried with no better success, but as he drew near the middle of the second shelf upon which lay several rows deep, he saw something dark behind, hurriedly displaced the packets between, and drew forth a small work box. His heart beat like that of the prince in the fairytale when he comes to the door of the sleeping beauty. This at least must have been hers. It was a common little thing, probably a childish possession, and kept a whole trifle's worth more than they looked to be. He opened it with bated breath. The first thing he saw was a half-finished reel of cotton, a purin, he called it. Beside it was a gold thimble. He lifted the tray. A lovely face and miniature with dark hair and blue eyes lay looking earnestly upward. At the lid of this coffin those eyes had looked for so many years. The picture was set all round with pearls in an oval ring. How Robert knew them to be pearls he could not tell, for he did not know that he had ever seen any pearls before, but he knew they were pearls, and that pearls had something to do with the new Jerusalem. But the sadness of it all at length overpowered him, and he burst out crying, for it was awfully sad that his mother's portrait should be in his own mother's box. He took a bit of red tape off a bundle of papers, put it through the eye of the setting, and hung the picture around his neck. Inside his clothes, for Granny must not see it. She would take that away as she had taken his fiddle. He had a nameless something now for which he had been longing for years. Looking again in the box he found a little bit of paper. It is colored with antiquity, as it seemed to him, though it was not so old as himself. Unfolding it he found written upon it a well-known hymn, and at the bottom of the hymn the words, O Lord, my heart is very sore. The treasure upon Robert's bosom was no longer the symbol of a mother's love, but of a woman's sadness, which he could not reach to comfort. In that hour the boy made a great stride towards manhood. Doubtless his mother's grief had been the same as Granny's, the fear that she would lose her husband forever. The hourly fresh griefs from neglect and a wrong did not occur to him, only the never, never more. He looked no farther, took the portrait from his neck, and replaced it with the paper, put the box back, and walled it up in solitude once more with the dusty bundles. Then he went down to his grandmother, sadder and more desolate than ever. He found her seated in her usual place, her New Testament, a large print octavo lay on the table beside her, unopened. For where within those boards could she find comfort for grief like hers? That it was the will of God might well comfort any suffering of her own, but would it comfort Andrew? And if there was no comfort for Andrew, how was Andrew's mother to be comforted? Yet God had given his firstborn to save his brethren. How could he be pleased that she should dry her tears and be comforted? True is some awful unknown force of a necessity with which God could not cope, came in to explain it. But this did not make God more kind, for he knew it all every time he made a man, nor man less sorrowful, for God would have his very mother forget him, or worse, still remember him and be happy. Read a chapter to me, laddie, she said. Robert opened in red till he came to the words, I pray not for the world. He was of the world, said the old woman, and if Christ would not pray for him, what force should I? Already so soon after her son's death would her theology begin to harden her heart. The strife which results from believing that the higher love demands the suppression of the lower is the most fearful of all discords, the absolute love slain love, the house divided against itself. One moment all given up for the will of him, the next the human tenderness rushing back in a flood. Mrs. Faulkner burst into a very agony of weeping. From that day, for many years, the name of her lost Andrew never passed her lips in the hearing of her grandson, and certainly in that of no one else. But in a few weeks, she was more cheerful. It is one of the mysteries of humanity that mothers in her circumstances and holding her creed do regain not merely the faculty of going on with the business of life, but in most cases even cheerfulness. The infinite truth, the love of the universe, supports them beyond their consciousness, coming to them like sleep from the roots of their being, and having nothing to do with their opinions or beliefs, and hence spring those comforting subterfuges of hope to which they all fly. Not being able to trust the Father entirely, they yet say, Who can tell? What took place at the last moment? Who can tell whether God did not please to grant them saving faith at the eleventh hour? And so they might pass from the very gates of hell, the only place for which their life had fitted them into the bosom of love and purity. This God could do for all. This for the son beloved of his mother perhaps he might do. O rebellious mother heart, dear to God than that which beats laboriously solemn under Genevan gown or Lutheran surplus. If thou wouldst read by thine own large light, instead of the glimmer from the phosphorescent brains of theologians, thou mightest even be able to understand such a simple word as that of the Savior, when wishing his disciples to know that he had a nearer regard for them as his brethren in holier danger than those who had not yet partaken of his light, and therefore praying for them not merely as human beings, but as the human beings they were, he said to his father in their hearing, I pray not for the world, but for them. Not for the world now, but for them, a meaningless utterance, if he never prayed for the world, a word of small meaning, if it was not his very want and custom to pray for the world, for men as men. Lord Christ, not alone from the pains of hell or of conscience, not alone from the outer darkness of self and all that is mean and poor and low, do we fly to thee. But from the anger that arises within us, at the wretched words spoken in thy name, at the degradation of thee and of thy father in the mouths of those that claim especially to have found thee, do we seek thy feet. Pray thou for them also, for they know not what they do. Chapter 13 Book 1, Chapter 14 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald. Chapter 14. Mary St. John. After this, day followed day in calm dull progress. Robert did not care for the games through which his school fellows forgot the little they had to forget, and had therefore few in any sense his companions. So he passed this time out of school in the society of his grandmother in Shargar, except that spent in the garret and the few hours a week occupied by the lessons of the shoemaker. For he went on though half heartedly with those lessons, given up upon Sandy's redeemed violin, which he called his old wife, and made a little progress even as we sometimes do when we least think it. He took more and more to brooding in the garret, and as more questions presented themselves for solution, he became more anxious to arrive at the solution, and more uneasy as he failed and satisfied himself that he had arrived at it, so that his brain, which needed quiet for the true formation of its substance as a cooling liquefaction or an evaporating solution for the just formation of its crystals, became in danger of settling into an abnormal arrangement of the cellular deposits. I believe that even the newborn infant is, in some of his moods, already grappling with the deepest metaphysical problems, informs infinitely too rudimental for the understanding of the ground philosopher, as far in fact removed from his can on the one side that of the intelligential beginning, the germinal subjective, as his abtrusive speculations are from the final solutions of absolute entity on the other. If this be the case, it is no wonder that at Robert's age, the deepest questions of his coming manhood should be an active operation, although so surrounded with the yoke of common belief, and the shell of accredited authority, that the embryo face, which in minds like his, always take the form of doubt, could not be defined any more than its existence could be disproved. I've given a hint at the tendency of his mind already, in the fact that one of the most definite inquiries to which he had yet turned his thoughts was, whether God would have mercy upon a repentant devil. An ordinary puzzle had been, if his father were to marry again, and it should turn out, after all, that his mother was not dead, what was his father to do? But this was over now. A third was, why, when he came out of church, sunshine always made him miserable, and he felt better able to be good when it rained or snowed hard. I might mention the inquiry, whether it was not possible somehow to elude the omniscience of God, but that is a common question with thoughtful children, and indicates little that is characteristic of the individual, that he puzzled himself about the perpetual emotion may pass for little likewise, but one thing that is worth mentioning, for indeed it caused him considerable distress, was that in reading the Paradise Lost he could not help sympathizing with Satan, and feeling, I do not say thinking, that the Almighty was pompous, scarcely reasonable, and somewhat revengeful. He was recognized amongst his school fellows as remarkable for his love of fair play, so much so that he was their constant referee. Add to this that notwithstanding his sympathy with Satan, he almost invariably sided with his master in regard of any angry reflection or seditious movement, and even when unjustly punished himself, the occasional result of a certain backwardness in self-defense, never showed any resentment, a most improbable statement I admit, but nevertheless true. And I think the rest of his character may be left to the gradual dawn of its historical manifestation. He had long ere this discovered who the angel was that had appeared to him at the top of the stair upon that memorable night, but he could hardly yet say that he had seen her. For except one dim glimpse he had had of her at the window as he passed in the street, she had not appeared to him saving the vision of that night. During the whole winter she scarcely left the house, partly from the state of her health affected by the sudden change to a northern climate, partly from the attention required by her aunt to aid in nursing whom she had left the warmer south. Indeed it was only to return the visits of a few of Mrs. Forsyth's chosen that she had crossed that threshold at all, and those visits were paid at a time when all such half-grown inhabitants as Robert were gathered under the leathery wing of Mr. Innis. But long before the winter was over, Rossadin had discovered that the stranger, the English lady, Mary St. John, outlandish, almost heathenish as her lovely name sounded in its ears, had a power as altogether strange and new as her name. For she was not only an admirable performer on the piano forte, but such a simple enthusiast in music that the man must have had no music or little part in him, in whom her playing did not move all that there was of the deepest. Occasionally there would be quite a small crowd gathered at night by the window of Mrs. Forsyth's drawing room, which was on the ground floor, listening to music such as had never before been heard in Rossadin. More than once when Robert had not found Sandy L. Schender at home on the lesson night and had gone to seek him, he had discovered him lying in wait like a fowler to catch the sweet sounds that flew from the open cage of her instrument. He leaned against the wall with his ear laid over the edge and as near the window as he dared to put it, his rough face gnarled and blotched and hair-suit with the stubble of a neglected beard, his whole face transfigured by the passage of the sweet sounds through his chaotic brain, which they swept like the wind of God, when of old it moved on the face of the waters that clothed the void in formless world. Hold your tongue, he would say, in a horse whisper when Robert sought to attract his attention. Hold your tongue, man, and harken. If you're on Bonnie Letty at your granny keeps lock it up in the armory war to take to the piano, that's just who she would play. Lord, man, pit your soul in your ears and harken. The shoemaker was all wrong in this, for if old Mr. Falconer's violin had taken woman's shape, it would have been that of a slight worn swarly creature with wild black eyes, great and restless, a voice like a bird's and thin fingers that clawed the music out of the wires like the quills of an old harpsichord.  Robert stared at the shoemaker, doubting at first whether he had not been drinking, but the intoxication of music produces such a different expression from that of drink, that Robert saw at once that if he had indeed been drinking, at least the music had got above the drink. As long as the plane went on, El Shender was not to be moved from the window. But to many of the people of Rostedin, the music did not recommend the musician. For every sort of music, except the most unmusical of psalm singing, was in their minds of a piece with dance and play acting and other worldly vanities and abominations. And Robert, being as yet more capable of melody than harmony, grudged to lose a lesson on Sandy's old wife of a fiddle for any amount of Miss St. John's plane. CHAPTER XIV One dusty evening, it was of the last day in March, Robert well remembered both the date and the day. A bleak wind was driving up the long street of the town, and Robert was standing looking out of one of the windows in the gable room. The evening was closing in tonight. He hardly knew how he came to be there, but when he thought about it, he found it was play Wednesday, and that he had been all the half-holiday trying one thing after another to interest himself with all, but in vain. He knew nothing about east winds, but not the less did this weary wind of the dreary March world prove itself upon his soul. For such a wind has a shadow wind along with it that blows in the minds of men. There was nothing genial, no growth in it. It killed, and killed most dogmatically. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Even an east wind must bear some blessing on its ugly wings, and as Robert looked down from the gable, the wind was blowing up the street before it half a dozen foot-faring students from Aberdeen on their way home at the close of the session, probably to the farm laborers of the spring. This was a glad sight, as that of the returning storks in Denmark. Robert knew where they would put up, sought his cap, and went out. His grandmother never objected to his going to see Miss Napier. It was in her house that the weary men would this night rest. It was not without reason that Lord Rothy had teased his hostess about receiving foot-passengers, for to such it was her invariable custom to make some civil excuse, sending Meg or Peggy to show them over the way to the hostel reneged in rank. A proceeding recognized by the inferior hostess as both just and friendly. For the good woman never thought of measuring the star against the boar's head. More than one comical story had been the result of this law of the boar's head, unalterable almost as that of the Meads and the Persians. I say almost, for to one class of the foot-faring community, the official ice about the hearts of the three women did though, yielding passage to a full river of hospitality and generosity. And that was the class to which these wayfarers belonged. Well may Scotland rejoice in her universities, for whatever may be said against their system, I have no complaint to make. They are divine in their freedom. Men who follow the plow in the spring and reap the harvest in the autumn may and often do frequent their sacred precincts when the winter comes, so fierce yet so welcome, so severe yet so blessed, opening for them the doors to yet harder toil and yet poor affair. I fear, however, that of such there will be fewer and fewer, seeing one class which supplied a portion of them has almost vanished from the country, that class which was its truest, simplest, and noblest strength, that class which at one time rendered it something far other than ridicule to say that Scotland was preeminently a God-faring nation. I mean the class of codders. Of this class were some of the foot-faring company, but there were others of more means than the men of this lowly origin, who either could not afford to travel by the expensive coaches or could find none to accommodate them. Possibly some preferred to walk. However, this may have been the various groups which at the beginning and close of the session passed through Rothedon, weary and foot sore, were sure of a hearty welcome at the boar's head. And much the men needed it. Some of them would have walked between one and 200 miles before completing their journey. Robert made a circuit, and fleet of foot was in Miss Napier's parlor before the travelers made their appearance on the square. When they knocked at the door, Miss Letty herself went and opened it. Can you take a sin, ma'am? was on the lips of their spokesman, but Miss Letty had the first word. Come in, come in, gentlemen. This is the first of you, and you're the more welcome. It's like seeing the first of the swallows in such a day as you have had for your long travel. She went on leading the way to her sister's parlor, and followed by all the students of whom the one that came hind most was the most remarkable of the group. At the same time, the most weary and downcast. Miss Napier gave them a similar welcome, shaking hands with every one of them. She knew them all but the last. To him, she involuntarily showed a more formal respect, partly from his appearance and partly that she had never seen him before. The whiskey bottle was brought out, and all partokes saved still the last. Miss Lizzie went to order their supper. New gentlemen, said Miss Letty, would only of ye like to go on and change your hauls and put on a pair of slippers? Several declines saying that they would wait until they had had their supper. The roads had been quite dry, et cetera, et cetera. One said he would, and another said his feet were blistered. Ho-ta-wa! An exclamation of pitiful sympathy, inexplicable to the understanding. Thus the author covers his philological ignorance of the crossbreeding of the phrase. Here, Peggy, she cried, going to the door. Take a pail of hot water up to the jacket room. Just ye go on up, Mr. Cameron, and Peggy'll see to your feet. No, sir, will ye go on to your room and make yourself comfortable, just as if ye were at home, for so ye are. She addressed the stranger thus. He replied in a low, indifferent tone. No, thank you. I must be off again directly. He was from Cathness and talked no scotch. Ye, sir, ye'll do nothing of the kind. Here ye survive, though I should lock the door. Come, come, Erickson, none of your nonsense, said one of his fellows. You know your feet are so blistered ye can hardly put one by the other. It was all we could do, ma'am, to get him along the last mile. That's be my business, then, included Miss Letty. She left the room in returning in a few minutes, said, as a matter of course, but with authority. Mr. Erickson, ye might not come with me. Then she hesitated a little. Was it maidenliness in the waning woman of five and forty? It was, I believe. For how can a woman always remember how old she is? If ever there was a young soul in God's world, it was Letty Napier. And the young man was tall and stately, and a Scandinavian chief with the look of command, tempered with patient endurance in his eagle face. For he was more like an eagle than any other creature, and in his countenance signs of suffering. Miss Letty, seeing this, was moved, and her heart swelled, and she grew conscious and shy, and, turning to Robert, said, come up the stair with us, Robert, I may want ye. Robert jumped to his feet. His heart, too, had been yearning towards the stranger. As if yielding to the inevitable, Erickson rose and followed Miss Letty.   I have not a shillin' in my pocket. God bless me, said Miss Letty, and God did bless her, I am sure. We mount seed of the feet first. What would ye do with the shillin' if ye had it? Would ye clap one upon Ilka blister? Erickson burst out laughing and sat down, but still he hesitated. Off with your shoe, sir. Do ye think I can wash your feet through bent leather? Said Miss Letty, not disdaining to advance her fingers to a shoe tie. But I'm ashamed. My stockings are all in holes. Well, ye's get a clean pair to put on in the morn, and I'll darn them that ye have on, if they be worth darnin' before ye gone. And what are ye so unmanageable for? A body would think ye had a clove and bit in Ilk one of the bits of shoon of yours. I will not promise to please your mother with my darnin', though. I have no mother to find fault with it, said Erickson. We have a sister's war. I have no sister, either. This was too much for Miss Letty. She could keep up the bravado of humor no longer. She fairly burst out crying. In a moment more, the shoes and stockings were off, and the blisters in the hot water. Miss Letty's tears dropped into the tub, and the salt indom did not hurt the feet with which she busied herself, more than was necessary to hide them. But no sooner had she recovered herself than she resumed her former tone. A shillen, said ye, and all thy greedy kites of professors to pay that live upon the bare-blood and bones of serve-rocked students. Who could ye have a shillen, or trial to its nay-wander ye have not on left? And all the merchants there, just leavin' upon ye, Lord, have a care of us, sitch's bonny feet, with blisters, I mean. And never saw such a sight of raw puddens in my life. You're no fit to come dune the stair again. All the time she was tenderly washing and bathing the weary feet. When she addressed them and tied them up, she took tub of water and carried it away, but turned at the door.   I'll send up your supper. And Robert don't bide and keep you company. She vanished, and a moment after, Peggy appeared, with a salamander, that is, a huge poker, ending not in a point, but a red-hot ace of spades, which she thrust between the bars of the grate into the heart of a nest of brushwood. Presently, a cheerful fire illuminated the room. Erickson was seated on one chair with his feet on another. His head sunk on his bosom and his eyes thinking. There was something about him almost as powerfully attractive to Robert as it had been to Miss Letty. So he sat gazing at him and longing for a chance of doing something for him. He had reverence already and some love, but he had never felt at all as he felt towards this man, nor was it as the Chinese puzzlers, called Scots metaphysicians, might have represented it, a combination of love and reverence. It was the recognition of the eternal brotherhood between him and one nobler than himself, hence a lovely eager worship. Seeing Erickson look about him as if he wanted something, Robert started to his feet.  A small bundle, I think, I brought up with me, replied the youth. It was not there. Robert rushed downstairs and returned with it, a night shirt and a hairbrush or so, tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief. This was all that Robert was able to do for Erickson that evening. He went home and dreamed about him. He called it the boars had the next morning before going to school, but Erickson was not yet up. When he called again as soon as morning school was over, he found that they had persuaded him to keep his bed. But Miss Letty took him up to his room. He looked better, was pleased to see Robert, and spoke to him kindly. Twice yet, Robert called to inquire after him that day, and once more he saw him, for he took his tea up to him. The next day, Erickson was much better, received Robert with a smile, and went out with him for a stroll for all his companions were gone, and of some students who had arrived since, he did not know any. Robert took him to his grandmother who received him with stately kindness. Then they went out again and passed the windows of Captain Forsyth's house. Mary St. John was playing. They stood for a moment almost involuntarily to listen. She ceased. That's the music of the spheres, said Erickson in a low voice as they moved on. Will you tell me what that means? Asked Robert. I've come upon it, or an aura in Milton. Thereupon Erickson explained to him what Pythagoras had taught about the stars moving in their great orbits with sounds of awful harmony, too grandly loud for the human organ to vibrate in response to their music, hence unheard of men. And Erickson spoke as if he believed it, but after he had spoken his face grew sadder than ever, and as if to change the subject he said abruptly, what a fine old lady your grandmother is, Robert. Is she? returned Robert. I don't mean to say she's like Miss Letty, said Erickson. She's an angel. A long cause followed. Robert's thoughts went roaming in their usual haunts. Do you think Mr. Erickson, he said at length, taking up the old questions still floating unanswered in his mind? Do you think if a devil was to repent, God would forgive him? Erickson turned and looked at him, their eyes met. The youth wondered at the boy. He had recognized in him a younger brother, one who had begun to ask questions, calling them out into the deaf and dumb abyss of the universe. If God was as good as I would like him to be, the devils themselves would repent, he said turning away. Then he turned again and looking down upon Robert like a sorrowful eagle from a crag over its harried nest, said, if I only knew that God was as good as that woman, I should die content. Robert heard words of blasphemy from the mouth of an angel, but his respect for Erickson compelled her to reply. What woman, Mr. Erickson, he asked? I mean Miss Letty, of course. But surely you do not think God's name is as good as she is, surely he's as good as he can be. He is good, you know. Oh yes, they say so.  But calling anybody good doesn't make him good, you know. Then he did not believe that God is good, Mr. Erickson, said Robert, choking with the strange mingling of horror and hope. I didn't say that, my boy, but to know that God was good and fair and kind, hardly, I mean, not half ways, and with ifs and buts, my boy, there would be nothing left to be miserable about. In a momentary flash of thought, Robert wondered whether this might not be his old friend, the repentant angel, sent to earth as a man, that he might have a share in the redemption and work out his own salvation. And from this very moment, the thoughts about God that had hitherto been moving in formless solution in his mind began slowly to crystallize. The next day, Erick Erickson, not without a piece in a pouch and money in another, took his way home if Fomac could be called where neither father, mother, brother, nor sister awaited his return. For a season, Robert saw him no more. As often as his name was mentioned, Miss Letty's eyes would grow hazy and as often she would make some comic book remark. Poor follow, she would say. He was over long-legged for this world. Or again, aye, he was a brow-child, but he cannot live, his feet soar small. Or yet again, saw ye ever such a gout to make such a workable sit-and-done and having his feet washed as if that cost the body anything? And chapter 15, Book One, chapter 16 of Robert Falconer by George MacDonald. This Libra Vox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George MacDonald. Chapter 16, Mr. Lambie's Farm. One of the first warm mornings in the beginning of summer, the boy woke early and lay awake, as was his custom, thinking. The sun and all the indescribable purity of its morning light had kindled a spot of brilliance, just about where his granny's head must be lying asleep in its sad thoughts on the opposite side of the partition. He lay looking at the light. There came a gentle tapping at his window, a long streamer of honeysuckle not yet in blossom, but alive with the life of the summer was blown by the air of the morning against his windowpane, as if calling him to get up and look out. He did get up and look out. But he started back in such haste that he fell against the side of his bed. Within a few yards of his window, bending over a bush, was the loveliest face he had ever seen. The only face, in fact, he had ever yet felt to be beautiful. For the window looked directly into the garden of the next house. Its honeysuckle tapped at his window. Its sweepies grew against his window sill. It was the face of the angel of that night. But how different when illuminated by the morning sun from then, when lighted up by chamber candle. The first thought that came to him was the half ludicrous, all-fantastic idea of the shoemaker about his grandfather's violin being a woman. A vagastream vision of her having escaped from his grandmother's store closet and wandering free amidst the wind and among the flowers crossed his mind before he had recovered sufficiently from his surprise to prevent fancy from cutting any more of those two ridiculous capers in which she indulged the will and sleep. And as often besides as she could get away from the spectacles of old grainy judgment. But the music of her revelation was not that of the violin. And Robert vaguely felt this, though he searched no further for a fitting instrument to represent her. If he had heard the organ, indeed. But he knew no instrument saved the violin. The piano he had only heard through the window. For a few moments, her face brooded over the bush and her long, finely modeled fingers traveled about it as if they were creating a flower upon it. Probably they were assisting the birth or blowing of some beauty. And then she raised herself with the lingering look and vanished from the field of the window. But ever after this, when the evening grew dark, Robert would steal out of the house, leaving his book open by his grainy's lamp that its patient expansion might seem to say, he will come back presently and dart around the corner with quick quiet step to hear if Miss St. John was playing. If she was not, he would return to the Sabbath stillness of the parlor where his grandmother sat meditating or reading and Shargar sat brooding over the freedom of the old days ere Miss Falconer had begun to reclaim him. There he would seat himself once more at his book to rise again ere another hour had gone by and harking yet again at her window whether this dream might not be flowing now. If he found her at her instrument, he would stand listening in earnest delight until the fear of being missed drove him in. This secret too might be discovered and this enchantress too sent by the decree of his grandmother into the limbo of vanities. Thus strangely did his evening life oscillate between the two peaceful negations of granny's parlor and the vital gladness of the unknown lady's window. And skillfully did he manage his retreats and returns, curting his absences with such moderation that for a long time they woke no suspicion in the mind of his grandmother. I suspect myself that the old lady thought he had gone to his prayers in the garret and I believe she thought that he was praying for his dead father with which most papistical and therefore most un-Christian observance she had dared not interfere because she expected Robert to defend himself triumphantly with the simple assertion that he did not believe that his father was dead. Possibly the mother was not sorry that her poor son should be prayed for in case he might be alive after all though she could no longer do so herself. Not merely dared not but persuaded herself that she would not. Robert however was convinced enough and hopeless enough by this time and had even less temptation to break the 20th commandment by praying for the dead than his grandmother had for with all his imaginative outgoings after his father. His love to him was as yet compared to that father's mother's as moonlight under sunlight and as water under wine. Sagar would glance up at him with the queer look as he came in from these excursions. Drop his head over his task again, look busy and miserable and all would glide on as before. When the first really summer weather came, Mr. Lammy one day paid Mrs. Falconer a second visit. He had not been able to get over the remembrance of the desolation in which he had left her. But he could do nothing for her, he thought, till it was warm weather. He was accompanied by his daughter, a woman approaching the further verge of youth, bulky and florid and as full of tenderness as her large frame could hold. After much and for a long time, apparently useless persuasion, they at last believed they had prevailed upon her to pay them a visit for a fortnight. But she had only retreated within another of her defenses. I cannot leave thy twa laddies alone. They would be up to a mischief. There's Betty to look after them, suggested Mrs. Lammy. Patty, returned Mrs. Falconer with scorn, Betty's nathen but a bairn herself, muckler and worse favor. But what force should not ye fast? The lids with thee, suggested Mr. Lammy. I have no right to burden you with them. Well, I have aft and wondered what made ye burden yourself with that chargar, as I understand they call him, said Mr. Lammy. Just nathen but a bit of greed returned the old lady with the nearest approach to a smile that had shown itself upon her face since Mr. Lammy's last visit. I did not understand that, Mr. Falconer, said Mrs. Lammy. I'm so sure of having it back again, you can, with interest, returned Mrs. Falconer. Who's that? His father will not call on ye any thanks for holding him in life. He that giveeth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, ye know, Mrs. Lammy. At will, if ye like to lippin' to that bank, may do it I will, or another, it'll go on to your account, said Mrs. Lammy. It would, it'll become us anyway, said her father. Need to give him shelter for your sake, Mrs. Falconer, not to mention other names since it's your will to make the poor lad on of the family. They say his own mothers run away and left him. Beach is done that. Can ye make anything of him? He's quiet enough, and Robert says he does, nay doubt, ill at the school. Well, just fest him with thee. We'll have some place or other to put him until, if it should be only a shakedown upon the floor. Nay, nay, there's the schoolin'. What's to be done with that? They can go on in the mornin' and get their dinner with Betty here, and sign come home to their four o'clock tea when the schools are in the afternoon. Deed, mammy, ma'am, just come for the sake of the old friendship between the families. Well, if it ma'am be so, it ma'am be so, yielded Mrs. Falconer with a sigh. She had not left her own house for a single night for ten years, nor is it likely she would have now given in for immovableness was one of the most marked of her characteristics. Had she not been so broken by mental suffering that she did not care much about anything, least of all about herself. Enumerable were the instructions in propriety of behavior which she gave the boys in prospect of this visit. The probability being that they would behave just as well as at home, these instructions were considerably unnecessary for Mrs. Falconer was a strict enforcer of all social rules. Scarcely thus unnecessary were the directions she gave as to the conduct of Betty, who received them all in erect submission with her hands under her apron. She ought to have been a young girl instead of an elderly woman if there was any propriety in the way her mistress spoke to her. It proved at least her own belief in the description she had given of her to Miss Lambie. Noobetty, you might be quiet and do not stand at the door in the glomen and do not stand chick-clakin' and John with the other lasses when you go on to the wall for water and when you go on until a chop do not have them saying behind your back as soon as you're out again. She's her own mistress by way of our such like and mind you have worship with yourself when I'm near to have it with you. You can come to the parlor if you like and there's my muckl testament and do not give the lads anything they want. Give them plenty to eat but nor are a muckl. Folks should I leave off with an appetite. Mr. Lambie brought his gig at last and took Granny away to body-fold. When the boys returned from school at the dinner hour it was to exalt in a freedom which Robert had never imagined before. But even he could not know what a relief it was to Chargar to eat without the awfully calm eyes of Mrs. Falconer watching as it seemed to him the progress of every mouthful down that capacious throat of his. The old lady would have been shocked to learn how the imagination of the ill-mothered lad interpreted her care over him but she would not have been surprised to know that the two were merry in her absence. She knew that in some of her own moods it would be a relief to think that the awful eye of God was not upon her but she little thought that even in the lawless proceedings about to follow her Robert who now felt such a relief in her absence would be walking straight on, though blindly towards a sunrise of faith in which he would know that for the eye of his God to turn away from him for one moment would be the horror of the outer darkness. Mary meant however was not in Robert's thoughts and still less was mischief. For the latter whatever his grandmother might think he had no capacity. The world was already too serious and was soon to be too beautiful for mischief. After that it would be too sad and then finally until death too solemn glad. The moment he heard of his grandmother's intended visit one wild hope and desire and intent had arisen within him. When Betty came to the parlor door to lay the cloth for their dinner she found it locked. Open the door she cried but cried in vain. From impatient she passed a passion. But it was no veil there came no more response than from the shrine of the death veil. For to the boys it was an opportunity not at any risk to be lost. Though Betty never suspected what they were about they were ranging the place like two tiger cats whose swelps had been carried off in their absence questing with nose to earth and tail in the air for the scent of their enemy. My simile has carried me too far. It was only a dead old gentleman's violin that a couple of boys were after but with what eagerness and on the part of Robert what alternations of hope and fear. And Shargar was always the reflex of Robert so far as Shargar could reflect Robert. Sometimes Robert would stop stand still in the middle of the room cast a mathematical glance of survey over its cubic contents and then dart off in another inwardly suggested direction of search. Shargar on the other hand appeared to rummage blindly without a notion of casting the illumination of thought upon the field of search. Yet to him fell the success. When hope was growing dim after an hour and a half of vain endeavor a scream of utter discordance heralded the resurrection of the lady of harmony. Top by his experience of his wild mother's habits to guess at those of quiet Mrs. Falconer Shargar had found the instrument in her bed at the foot between the feathers and the mattress. For one happy moment Shargar was the benefactor and Robert the grateful recipient of favor. Nor I do believe was this thread of the still thickening cable that bound them ever forgotten broken it could not be. Robert drew the recovered treasure from its concealment opened the case with trembling eagerness and was stooping with one hand on the neck of the violin and the other on the bow to lift them from it when Shargar stopped him. His success had given him such dignity that for once he dared to act from himself. Bet he'll hear ye, he said. What care I forbid he, she dare not tell. I know who to manage her. But would not it be better at she did not know? She's sure to find out when she makes the bed.  Devil a bit of hers be a higher wiser. He did not play tunes upon the boxy man. Robert caught it the idea. He lifted the bonny laddie from her coffin and while he was absorbed in the contemplation of her risen beauty, Shargar laid his hands on Boston's fourfold state, the torment of his life on the Sunday evenings, which it was his turn to spend with Mrs. Falconer and threw it as an offering to the powers of Hades into the case which he then buried carefully with the feather bed for mold. The blankets were sod and the counterpains studiously arranged for stone over it. He took heed, however, not to let Robert know of the substitution of Boston for the fiddle because he knew Robert could not tell a lie. Therefore, when he murmured over the volume some of its own words, which he had read the preceding Sunday, it was in quite inaudible whisper. Now is it good for nothing but to cumber the ground and furnish fuel for Tofett. Robert must now hide the violin better than his granny had done while at the same time it was a more delicate necessity seeing it had lost its shell and he shrunk from putting her in the power of the shoemaker again. It cost him much trouble to fix on the place that was least unsuitable. First he put it into the well of the clock case but instantly he thought in what the awful consequence would be if one of the weights should fall from the gradual decay of its cord. He had heard of such a thing happening. Then he would put it into his own place of dreams and meditations. But what if Betty should take a fancy to change her bed or some friend of his granny should come to spend the night? How would the Bonnie lady like it? What a risk she would run. If you put her under the bed, the mice would get at her strings. Nay, perhaps now haul right through her beautiful body. On the top of the clock, the brass eagle without spread rings might scratch her and there was not space to conceal her. At length he concluded, wrapped her in a piece of paper and placed her on the top of the chintz tester of his bed where there was just room between it and the ceiling. That would serve till he bore her to some better sanctuary. In the meantime she was safe and the boy was the blessedest boy in creation. These things done, they were just in the humor to have a lark with Betty. So they unbolted the door, rang the bell and when Betty appeared red faced and wrathful, asked her very gravely and politely whether they were not going to have some dinner before they went back to school. They had now but 20 minutes left. Betty was so dumbfounded with their impudence that she could not say a word. She did make haste with the dinner though and revealed her indignation only in her manner of putting the things on the table. As the boys left her, Robert contented himself with a single hint. Betty's body falls in the Paris of Kettledrum. Mind ye that? Betty glowered and said nothing. But the delight of the walk of three miles over hill and dale and moor and farm to Mr. Lammy's. The boys, if not as wild as Colts, that is as wild as most boys would have been, were only the more deeply excited. That first summer walk with the goal before them in all the freshness of the perfecting year was something which, to remember in after days, was to falconer nothing short of ecstasy. The western sun threw long shadows before them as they trudged away eastward, lightly laden with the books, needful for the morrow's lessons. Once beyond the immediate pearl leis of the town and the various plots of land occupied by its inhabitants, they crossed the small river and entered upon a region of little hills, some covered to the top with trees, chiefly large. Others cultivated in sun-burying only heather, now nursing in secret its purple flame for the outburst of the autumn. The road wound between now swampy and worn into deep ruts, now sandy and broken with large stones. Down to its edge would come the dwarfed oak or the mountain ash or the silver birch, single and small, but lovely and fresh and now green fields fenced with walls of earth as green as themselves or if stones overgrown with moss would stretch away on both sides, sprinkled with busily feeding cattle. Now they would pass through a farm steading, perfumed with the breath of cows and the odor of burning peat, so fragrant though not yet so grateful to the inner sense as it would be when encountered in after years and in foreign lands. For the smell of burning and the smell of earth are the deepest underlined sensuous bonds of the earth's unity and the common brotherhood of them that dwell thereon. Now the scent of the larches would steal from the hill or the wind would waft the odor of the white clover beloved of his grandmother to Robert's nostrils and he would turn aside to pull her a handful. Then they climbed a high ridge on the top of which spread a moorland, dreary and desolate, brightened by nothing and saved the canna's hoary beard waving and making it look even more desolate from the sympathy they felt with the forsaking grass. This cross they descended between young plantations of furs and rowan trees and birches till they reached a warm house on the side of the slope with farm offices and ricks of corn and hay all about it, the front overgrown with roses and honeysuckle and a white flowering plant unseen of their eyes hitherto and therefore full of mystery. From the open kitchen door came the smell of something good but beyond all to Robert was the welcome of Ms. Lambie whose small fat hand closed upon to his like a very love-putting after partaking of which even his grandmother's stately reception followed immediately by the words, new be quiet, could not chill the warmth in his bosom. I know but one rider whose pen would have been able worthily to set forth the delights of the first few days at body-fold, John Paul. Nor would he have disdained to make the gladness of a country schoolboy the theme of that pen. Indeed, often has he done so. If the rider has any higher purpose than the amusement of other boys, he will find the life of a country boy richer for his ends than that of a town boy. For example, he has a deeper sense of the marvel of nature, a tender feeling of her feminality. I do not mean that the other cannot develop this sense but it is generally feeble and there is consequently less chance of it surviving. As far as my experience goes, town girls and country boys love nature most. I have known town girls love her as passionately as country boys. Town boys have too many books and pictures. They see nature in mirrors, invaluable privilege after they know herself, not before. They have greater opportunity of observing human nature but here also the books are too many and various. They are cleverer than country boys but they are less profound. Their observation may be quicker, their perception is shallower. They know better what to do on an emergency, they know worse how to order their ways. Of course in this, as in a thousand other matters, nature will burst out laughing in the face of the would-be philosopher and bringing forward her town boy will say, look here. For the town boys are nature's boys after all, at least so long as doctrines of self-preservation and ambition have not turned them from children of the kingdom into dirtworms. But I must stop for I am getting up to the neck in a bog of discrimination as if I did not know the nobility of some town's people compared with the worldliness of some country folk. I give it up. We are all good and all bad. God mend all. Nothing will do for Jew or Gentile, Frenchman or Englishman, Negro or Circassian, town boy or country boy but the kingdom of heaven which is within him and must come dense to the outside of him. To a boy like Robert, the changes of every day from country to town with the game morning from the town to the country with the sober evening. For country as Rothedin might be to Edinburgh, much more was body falled contrary to Rothedin were a source of boundless delight. Instead of houses, he saw the horizon. Instead of streets or walled gardens, he roamed over fields bathed in sunlight and wind. Here it was good to get up before the sun for then he could see the sun get up. And of all things, those evening shadows lengthening out over the grassy wilderness for fields of a very moderate size appeared such to an imagination ever ready at the smallest hint to ascend its solemn throne were a deepening marvel. Town to country is what a ceiling is to a Salem and chapter 16.