XVI. A STRANGE NIGHT…

XVI. A STRANGE NIGHT

The youths had not left the city a mile behind, when a thick snowstorm came on. It did not last long, however, and they fought their way through it into a glimpse of sun. To Robert, healthy, powerful, and except at rare times, hopeful, it added to the pleasure of the journey to contend with the storm, and there was a certain steely indifference about Ericson that carried him through. They trudged on steadily for three hours along a good turnpike road, with great black masses of cloud sweeping across the sky, which now sent them a glimmer of sunlight, and now a sharp shower of hail. The country was very dreary--a succession of undulations rising into bleak moorlands, and hills whose heather would in autumn flush the land with glorious purple, but which now looked black and cheerless, as if no sunshine could ever warm them. Now and then the moorland would sweep down to the edge of the road, diversified with dark holes from which peats were dug, and an occasional quarry of gray granite. At one moment endless pools would be shining in the sunlight, and the next the hail would be dancing a mad fantastic dance all about them: they pulled their caps over their brows, bent their heads, and struggled on.

At length they reached their first stage, and after a meal of bread and cheese and an offered glass of whisky, started again on their journey. They did not talk much, for their force was spent on their progress.

After some consultation whether to keep the road or take a certain short cut across the moors, which would lead them into it again with a saving of several miles, the sun shining out with a little stronger promise than he had yet given, they resolved upon the latter. But in the middle of the moorland the wind and the hail came on with increased violence, and they were glad to tack from one to another of the huge stones that lay about, and take a short breathing time under the lee of each; so that when they recovered the road, they had lost as many miles in time and strength as they had saved in distance. They did not give in, however, but after another rest and a little more refreshment, started again.

The evening was now growing dusk around them, and the fatigue of the day was telling so severely on Ericson, that when in the twilight they heard the blast of a horn behind them, and turning saw the two flaming eyes of a well-known four-horse coach come fluctuating towards them, Robert insisted on their getting up and riding the rest of the way.

'But I can't afford it,' said Ericson.

'But I can,' said Robert.

'I don't doubt it,' returned Ericson. 'But I owe you too much already.'

'Gin ever we win hame--I mean to the heart o' hame--ye can pay me there.'

'There will be no need then.'

'Whaur's the need than to mak sic a wark aboot a saxpence or twa atween this and that? I thocht ye cared for naething that time or space or sense could grip or measure. Mr. Ericson, ye're no half sic a philosopher as ye wad set up for.--Hillo!'

Ericson laughed a weary laugh, and as the coach stopped in obedience to Robert's hail, he scrambled up behind.

The guard knew Robert, was pitiful over the condition of the travellers, would have put them inside, but that there was a lady there, and their clothes were wet, got out a great horse-rug and wrapped Robert in it, put a spare coat of his own, about an inch thick, upon Ericson, drew out a flask, took a pull at it, handed it to his new passengers, and blew a vigorous blast on his long horn, for they were approaching a desolate shed where they had to change their weary horses for four fresh thorough-breds.

Away they went once more, careering through the gathering darkness. It was delightful indeed to have to urge one weary leg past the other no more, but be borne along towards food, fire, and bed. But their adventures were not so nearly over as they imagined. Once more the hail fell furiously--huge hailstones, each made of many, half-melted and welded together into solid lumps of ice. The coachman could scarcely hold his face to the shower, and the blows they received on their faces and legs, drove the thin-skinned, high-spirited horses nearly mad. At length they would face it no longer. At a turn in the road, where it crossed a brook by a bridge with a low stone wall, the wind met them right in the face with redoubled vehemence; the leaders swerved from it, and were just rising to jump over the parapet, when the coachman, whose hands were nearly insensible with cold, threw his leg over the reins, and pulled them up. One of the leaders reared, and fell backwards; one of the wheelers kicked vigorously; a few moments, and in spite of the guard at their heads, all was one struggling mass of bodies and legs, with a broken pole in the midst. The few passengers got down; and Robert, fearing that yet worse might happen and remembering the lady, opened the door. He found her quite composed. As he helped her out,

'What is the matter?' asked the voice dearest to him in the world--the voice of Miss St. John.

He gave a cry of delight. Wrapped in the horse-cloth, Miss St. John did not know him.

'What is the matter?' she repeated.

'Ow, naething, mem--naething. Only I doobt we winna get ye hame the nicht.'

'Is it you, Robert?' she said, gladly recognizing his voice.

'Ay, it's me, and Mr. Ericson. We'll tak care o' ye, mem.'

'But surely we shall get home!'

Robert had heard the crack of the breaking pole.

''Deed, I doobt no.'

'What are we to do, then?'

'Come into the lythe (shelter) o' the bank here, oot o' the gait o' thae brutes o' horses,' said Robert, taking off his horse-cloth and wrapping her in it.

The storm hissed and smote all around them. She took Robert's arm. Followed by Ericson, they left the coach and the struggling horses, and withdrew to a bank that overhung the road. As soon as they were out of the wind, Robert, who had made up his mind, said,

'We canna be mony yairds frae the auld hoose o' Bogbonnie. We micht win throu the nicht there weel eneuch. I'll speir at the gaird, the minute the horses are clear. We war 'maist ower the brig, I heard the coachman say.'

'I know quite well where the old house is,' said Ericson. 'I went in the last time I walked this way.'

'Was the door open?' asked Robert.

'I don't know,' answered Ericson. 'I found one of the windows open in the basement.'

'We'll get the len' o' ane o' the lanterns, an' gang direckly. It canna be mair nor the breedth o' a rig or twa frae the burn.'

'I can take you by the road,' said Ericson.

'It will be very cold,' said Miss St. John,--already shivering, partly from disquietude.

'There's timmer eneuch there to haud 's warm for a twalmonth,' said Robert.

He went back to the coach. By this time the horses were nearly extricated. Two of them stood steaming in the lamplight, with their sides going at twenty bellows' speed. The guard would not let him have one of the coach lamps, but gave him a small lantern of his own. When he returned with it, he found Ericson and Miss St. John talking together.

Ericson led the way, and the others followed.

'Whaur are ye gaein', gentlemen?' asked the guard, as they passed the coach.

'To the auld hoose,' answered Robert.

'Ye canna do better. I maun bide wi' the coch till the lave gang back to Drumheid wi' the horses, on' fess anither pole. Faith, it'll be weel into the mornin' or we win oot o' this. Tak care hoo ye gang. There's holes i' the auld hoose, I doobt.'

'We'll tak gude care, ye may be sure, Hector,' said Robert, as they left the bridge.

The house to which Ericson was leading them was in the midst of a field. There was just light enough to show a huge mass standing in the dark, without a tree or shelter of any sort. When they reached it, all that Miss St. John could distinguish was a wide broken stair leading up to the door, with glimpses of a large, plain, ugly, square front. The stones of the stair sloped and hung in several directions; but it was plain to a glance that the place was dilapidated through extraordinary neglect, rather than by the usual wear of time. In fact, it belonged only to the beginning of the preceding century, somewhere in Queen Anne's time. There was a heavy door to it, but fortunately for Miss St. John, who would not quite have relished getting in at the window of which Ericson had spoken, it stood a little ajar. The wind roared in the gap and echoed in the empty hall into which they now entered. Certainly Robert was right: there was wood enough to keep them warm; for that hall, and every room into which they went, from top to bottom of the huge house, was lined with pine. No paint-brush had ever passed upon it. Neither was there a spot to be seen upon the grain of the wood: it was clean as the day when the house was finished, only it had grown much browner. A close gallery, with window-frames which had never been glazed, at one story's height, leading across from the one side of the first floor to the other, looked down into the great echoing hall, which rose in the centre of the building to the height of two stories; but this was unrecognizable in the poor light of the guard's lantern. All the rooms on every floor opened each into the other;--but why should I give such a minute description, making my reader expect a ghost story, or at least a nocturnal adventure? I only want him to feel something of what our party felt as they entered this desolate building, which, though some hundred and twenty years old, bore not a single mark upon the smooth floors or spotless walls to indicate that article of furniture had ever stood in it, or human being ever inhabited it. There was a strange and unusual horror about the place--a feeling quite different from that belonging to an ancient house, however haunted it might be. It was like a body that had never had a human soul in it. There was no sense of a human history about it. Miss St. John's feeling of eeriness rose to the height when, in wandering through the many rooms in search of one where the windows were less broken, she came upon one spot in the floor. It was only a hole worn down through floor after floor, from top to bottom, by the drip of the rains from the broken roof: it looked like the disease of the desolate place, and she shuddered.

Here they must pass the night, with the wind roaring awfully through the echoing emptiness, and every now and then the hail clashing against what glass remained in the windows. They found one room with the window well boarded up, for until lately some care had been taken of the place to keep it from the weather. There Robert left his companions, who presently heard the sounds of tearing and breaking below, necessity justifying him in the appropriation of some of the wood-work for their own behoof. He tore a panel or two from the walls, and returning with them, lighted a fire on the empty hearth, where, from the look of the stone and mortar, certainly never fire had blazed before. The wood was dry as a bone, and burnt up gloriously.

Then first Robert bethought himself that they had nothing to eat. He himself was full of merriment, and cared nothing about eating; for had he not Miss St. John and Ericson there? but for them something must be provided. He took his lantern and went back through the storm. The hail had ceased, but the wind blew tremendously. The coach stood upon the bridge like a stranded vessel, its two lamps holding doubtful battle with the wind, now flaring out triumphantly, now almost yielding up the ghost. Inside, the guard was snoring in defiance of the pother o'er his head.

'Hector! Hector!' cried Robert.

'Ay, ay,' answered Hector. 'It's no time to wauken yet.'

'Hae ye nae basket, Hector, wi' something to eat in 't--naething gaein' to Rothieden 'at a body micht say by yer leave till?'

'Ow! it's you, is 't?' returned Hector, rousing himself. 'Na. Deil ane. An' gin I had, I daurna gie ye 't.'

'I wad mak free to steal 't, though, an' tak my chance,' said Robert. 'But ye say ye hae nane?'

'Nane, I tell ye. Ye winna hunger afore the mornin', man.'

'I'll stan' hunger as weel 's you ony day, Hector. It's no for mysel'. There's Miss St. John.'

'Hoots!' said Hector, peevishly, for he wanted to go to sleep again, 'gang and mak luve till her. Nae lass 'll think o' meat as lang 's ye do that. That 'll haud her ohn hungert.'

The words were like blasphemy in Robert's ear. He make love to Miss St. John! He turned from the coach-door in disgust. But there was no place he knew of where anything could be had, and he must return empty-handed.

The light of the fire shone through a little hole in the boards that closed the window. His lamp had gone out, but, guided by that, he found the road again, and felt his way up the stairs. When he entered the room he saw Miss St. John sitting on the floor, for there was nowhere else to sit, with the guard's coat under her. She had taken off her bonnet. Her back leaned against the side of the chimney, and her eyes were bent thoughtfully on the ground. In their shine Robert read instinctively that Ericson had said something that had set her thinking. He lay on the floor at some distance, leaning on his elbow, and his eye had the flash in it that indicates one who has just ceased speaking. They had not found his absence awkward at least.

'I hae been efter something to eat,' said Robert; 'but I canna fa' in wi' onything. We maun jist tell stories or sing sangs, as fowk do in buiks, or else Miss St. John 'ill think lang.'

They did sing songs, and they did tell stories. I will not trouble my reader with more than the sketch of one which Robert told--the story of the old house wherein they sat--a house without a history, save the story of its no history. It had been built for the jointure-house of a young countess, whose husband was an old man. A lover to whom she had turned a deaf ear had left the country, begging ere he went her acceptance of a lovely Italian grayhound. She was weak enough to receive the animal. Her husband died the same year, and before the end of it the dog went mad, and bit her. According to the awful custom of the time they smothered her between two feather-beds, just as the house of Bogbonnie was ready to receive her furniture, and become her future dwelling. No one had ever occupied it.

If Miss St. John listened to story and song without as much show of feeling as Mysie Lindsay would have manifested, it was not that she entered into them less deeply. It was that she was more, not felt less.

Listening at her window once with Robert, Eric Ericson had heard Mary St. John play: this was their first meeting. Full as his mind was of Mysie, he could not fail to feel the charm of a noble, stately womanhood that could give support, instead of rousing sympathy for helplessness. There was in the dignified simplicity of Mary St. John that which made every good man remember his mother; and a good man will think this grand praise, though a fast girl will take it for a doubtful compliment.

Seeing her begin to look weary, the young men spread a couch for her as best they could, made up the fire, and telling her they would be in the hall below, retired, kindled another fire, and sat down to wait for the morning. They held a long talk. At length Robert fell asleep on the floor.

Ericson rose. One of his fits of impatient doubt was upon him. In the dying embers of the fire he strode up and down the waste hall, with the storm raving around it. He was destined to an early death; he would leave no one of his kin to mourn for him; the girl whose fair face had possessed his imagination, would not give one sigh to his memory, wandering on through the regions of fancy all the same; and the death-struggle over, he might awake in a godless void, where, having no creative power in himself, he must be tossed about, a conscious yet helpless atom, to eternity. It was not annihilation he feared, although he did shrink from the thought of unconsciousness; it was life without law that he dreaded, existence without the bonds of a holy necessity, thought without faith, being without God.

For all her fatigue Miss St. John could not sleep. The house quivered in the wind which howled more and more madly through its long passages and empty rooms; and she thought she heard cries in the midst of the howling. In vain she reasoned with herself: she could not rest. She rose and opened the door of her room, with a vague notion of being nearer to the young men.

It opened upon the narrow gallery, already mentioned as leading from one side of the first floor to the other at mid-height along the end of the hall. The fire below shone into this gallery, for it was divided from the hall only by a screen of crossing bars of wood, like unglazed window-frames, possibly intended to hold glass. Of the relation of the passage to the hall Mary St. John knew nothing, till, approaching the light, she found herself looking down into the red dusk below. She stood riveted; for in the centre of the hall, with his hands clasped over his head like the solitary arch of a ruined Gothic aisle, stood Ericson.

His agony had grown within him--the agony of the silence that brooded immovable throughout the infinite, whose sea would ripple to no breath of the feeble tempest of his prayers. At length it broke from him in low but sharp sounds of words.

'O God,' he said, 'if thou art, why dost thou not speak? If I am thy handiwork--dost thou forget that which thou hast made?'

He paused, motionless, then cried again:

'There can be no God, or he would hear.'

'God has heard me!' said a full-toned voice of feminine tenderness somewhere in the air. Looking up, Ericson saw the dim form of Mary St. John half-way up the side of the lofty hall. The same moment she vanished--trembling at the sound of her own voice.

Thus to Ericson as to Robert had she appeared as an angel.

And was she less of a divine messenger because she had a human body, whose path lay not through the air? The storm of misery folded its wings in Eric's bosom, and, at the sound of her voice, there was a great calm. Nor if we inquire into the matter shall we find that such an effect indicated anything derogatory to the depth of his feelings or the strength of his judgment. It is not through the judgment that a troubled heart can be set at rest. It needs a revelation, a vision; a something for the higher nature that breeds and infolds the intellect, to recognize as of its own, and lay hold of by faithful hope. And what fitter messenger of such hope than the harmonious presence of a woman, whose form itself tells of highest law, and concord, and uplifting obedience; such a one whose beauty walks the upper air of noble loveliness; whose voice, even in speech, is one of the 'sphere-born harmonious sisters? The very presence of such a being gives Unbelief the lie, deep as the throat of her lying. Harmony, which is beauty and law, works necessary faith in the region capable of truth. It needs the intervention of no reasoning. It is beheld. This visible Peace, with that voice of woman's truth, said, 'God has heard me!' What better testimony could an angel have brought him? Or why should an angel's testimony weigh more than such a woman's? The mere understanding of a man like Ericson would only have demanded of an angel proof that he was an angel, proof that angels knew better than he did in the matter in question, proof that they were not easy-going creatures that took for granted the rumours of heaven. The best that a miracle can do is to give hope; of the objects of faith it can give no proof; one spiritual testimony is worth a thousand of them. For to gain the sole proof of which these truths admit, a man must grow into harmony with them. If there are no such things he cannot become conscious of a harmony that has no existence; he cannot thus deceive himself; if there are, they must yet remain doubtful until the harmony between them and his own willing nature is established. The perception of this harmony is their only and incommunicable proof. For this process time is needful; and therefore we are saved by hope. Hence it is no wonder that before another half-hour was over, Ericson was asleep by Robert's side.

They were aroused in the cold gray light of the morning by the blast of Hector's horn. Miss St. John was ready in a moment. The coach was waiting for them at the end of the grassy road that led from the house. Hector put them all inside. Before they reached Rothieden the events of the night began to wear the doubtful aspect of a dream. No allusion was made to what had occurred while Robert slept; but all the journey Ericson felt towards Miss St. John as Wordsworth felt towards the leech-gatherer, who, he says, was

like a man from some far region sent, To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.

And Robert saw a certain light in her eyes which reminded him of how she looked when, having repented of her momentary hardness towards him, she was ministering to his wounded head.

XVII. HOME AGAIN

When Robert opened the door of his grandmother's parlour, he found the old lady seated at breakfast. She rose, pushed back her chair, and met him in the middle of the room; put her old arms round him, offered her smooth white cheek to him, and wept. Robert wondered that she did not look older; for the time he had been away seemed an age, although in truth only eight months.

'Hoo are ye, laddie?' she said. 'I'm richt glaid, for I hae been thinkin' lang to see ye. Sit ye doon.'

Betty rushed in, drying her hands on her apron. She had not heard him enter.

'Eh losh!' she cried, and put her wet apron to her eyes. 'Sic a man as ye're grown, Robert! A puir body like me maunna be speykin to ye noo.'

'There's nae odds in me, Betty,' returned Robert.

''Deed but there is. Ye're sax feet an' a hairy ower, I s' warran'.'

'I said there was nae odds i' me, Betty,' persisted Robert, laughing.

'I kenna what may be in ye,' retorted Betty; 'but there's an unco' odds upo' ye.'

'Haud yer tongue, Betty,' said her mistress. 'Ye oucht to ken better nor stan' jawin' wi' young men. Fess mair o' the creamy cakes.'

'Maybe Robert wad like a drappy o' parritch.'

'Onything, Betty,' said Robert. 'I'm at deith's door wi' hunger.'

'Rin, Betty, for the cakes. An' fess a loaf o' white breid; we canna bide for the parritch.'

Robert fell to his breakfast, and while he ate--somewhat ravenously--he told his grandmother the adventures of the night, and introduced the question whether he might not ask Ericson to stay a few days with him.

'Ony frien' o' yours, laddie,' she replied, qualifying her words only with the addition--'gin he be a frien'.--Whaur is he noo?'

'He's up at Miss Naper's.'

'Hoots! What for didna ye fess him in wi' ye?--Betty!'

'Na, na, grannie. The Napers are frien's o' his. We maunna interfere wi' them. I'll gang up mysel' ance I hae had my brakfast.'

'Weel, weel, laddie. Eh! I'm blythe to see ye! Hae ye gotten ony prizes noo?'

'Ay have I. I'm sorry they're nae baith o' them the first. But I hae the first o' ane an' the third o' the ither.'

'I am pleased at that, Robert. Ye'll be a man some day gin ye haud frae drink an' frae--frae leein'.'

'I never tellt a lee i' my life, grannie.'

'Na. I dinna think 'at ever ye did.--An' what's that crater Shargar aboot?'

'Ow, jist gaein' to be a croon o' glory to ye, grannie. He vroucht like a horse till Dr. Anderson took him by the han', an' sent him to the schuil. An' he's gaein' to mak something o' 'im, or a' be dune. He's a fine crater, Shargar.'

'He tuik a munelicht flittin' frae here,' rejoined the old lady, in a tone of offence. 'He micht hae said gude day to me, I think.'

'Ye see he was feart at ye, grannie.'

'Feart at me, laddie! Wha ever was feart at me? I never feart onybody i' my life.'

So little did the dear old lady know that she was a terror to her neighbourhood!--simply because, being a law to herself, she would therefore be a law to other people,--a conclusion that cannot be concluded.

Mrs. Falconer's courtesy did not fail. Her grandson had ceased to be a child; her responsibility had in so far ceased; her conscience was relieved at being rid of it; and the humanity of her great heart came out to greet the youth. She received Ericson with perfect hospitality, made him at home as far as the stately respect she showed him would admit of his being so, and confirmed in him the impression of her which Robert had given him. They held many talks together; and such was the circumspection of Ericson that, not saying a word he did not believe, he so said what he did believe, or so avoided the points upon which they would have differed seriously, that although his theology was of course far from satisfying her, she yet affirmed her conviction that the root of the matter was in him. This distressed Ericson, however, for he feared he must have been deceitful, if not hypocritical.

It was with some grumbling that the Napiers, especially Miss Letty, parted with him to Mrs. Falconer. The hearts of all three had so taken to the youth, that he found himself more at home in that hostelry than anywhere else in the world. Miss Letty was the only one that spoke lightly of him--she even went so far as to make good-natured game of him sometimes--all because she loved him more than the others--more indeed than she cared to show, for fear of exposing 'an old woman's ridiculous fancy,' as she called her predilection.--'A lang-leggit, prood, landless laird,' she would say, with a moist glimmer in her loving eyes, 'wi' the maist ridiculous feet ye ever saw--hardly room for the five taes atween the twa! Losh!'

When Robert went forth into the streets, he was surprised to find how friendly every one was. Even old William MacGregor shook him kindly by the hand, inquired after his health, told him not to study too hard, informed him that he had a copy of a queer old book that he would like to see, &c., &c. Upon reflection Robert discovered the cause: though he had scarcely gained a bursary, he had gained prizes; and in a little place like Rothieden--long may there be such places!--everybody with any brains at all took a share in the distinction he had merited.

Ericson stayed only a few days. He went back to the twilight of the north, his fishy cousin, and his tutorship at Sir Olaf Petersen's. Robert accompanied him ten miles on his journey, and would have gone further, but that he was to play on his violin before Miss St. John the next day for the first time.

When he told his grandmother of the appointment he had made, she only remarked, in a tone of some satisfaction,

'Weel, she's a fine lass, Miss St. John; and gin ye tak to ane anither, ye canna do better.'

But Robert's thoughts were so different from Mrs. Falconer's that he did not even suspect what she meant. He no more dreamed of marrying Miss St. John than of marrying his forbidden grandmother. Yet she was no loss at this period the ruling influence of his life; and if it had not been for the benediction of her presence and power, this part of his history too would have been torn by inward troubles. It is not good that a man should batter day and night at the gate of heaven. Sometimes he can do nothing else, and then nothing else is worth doing; but the very noise of the siege will sometimes drown the still small voice that calls from the open postern. There is a door wide to the jewelled wall not far from any one of us, even when he least can find it.

Robert, however, notwithstanding the pedestal upon which Miss St. John stood in his worshipping regard, began to be aware that his feeling towards her was losing something of its placid flow, and I doubt whether Miss St. John did not now and then see that in his face which made her tremble a little, and doubt whether she stood on safe ground with a youth just waking into manhood--tremble a little, not for herself, but for him. Her fear would have found itself more than justified, if she had surprised him kissing her glove, and then replacing it where he had found it, with the air of one consciously guilty of presumption.

Possibly also Miss St. John may have had to confess to herself that had she not had her history already, and been ten years his senior, she might have found no little attraction in the noble bearing and handsome face of young Falconer. The rest of his features had now grown into complete harmony of relation with his whilom premature and therefore portentous nose; his eyes glowed and gleamed with humanity, and his whole countenance bore self-evident witness of being a true face and no mask, a revelation of his individual being, and not a mere inheritance from a fine breed of fathers and mothers. As it was, she could admire and love him without danger of falling in love with him; but not without fear lest he should not assume the correlative position. She saw no way of prevention, however, without running a risk of worse. She shrunk altogether from putting on anything; she abhorred tact, and pretence was impracticable with Mary St. John. She resolved that if she saw any definite ground for uneasiness she would return to England, and leave any impression she might have made to wear out in her absence and silence. Things did not seem to render this necessary yet.

Meantime the violin of the dead shoemaker blended its wails with the rich harmonies of Mary St. John's piano, and the soul of Robert went forth upon the level of the sound and hovered about the beauty of his friend. Oftener than she approved was she drawn by Robert's eagerness into these consorts.

But the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord.

While Robert thus once more for a season stood behind the cherub with the flaming sword, Ericson was teaching two stiff-necked youths in a dreary house in the midst of one of the moors of Caithness. One day he had a slight attack of blood-spitting, and welcomed it as a sign from what heaven there might be beyond the grave.

He had not received the consolation of Miss St. John without, although unconsciously, leaving something in her mind in return. No human being has ever been allowed to occupy the position of a pure benefactor. The receiver has his turn, and becomes the giver. From her talk with Ericson, and even more from the influence of his sad holy doubt, a fresh touch of the actinism of the solar truth fell upon the living seed in her heart, and her life burst forth afresh, began to bud in new questions that needed answers, and new prayers that sought them.

But she never dreamed that Robert was capable of sympathy with such thoughts and feelings: he was but a boy. Nor in power of dealing with truth was he at all on the same level with her, for however poor he might have considered her theories, she had led a life hitherto, had passed through sorrow without bitterness, had done her duty without pride, had hoped without conceit of favour, had, as she believed, heard the voice of God saying, 'This is the way.' Hence she was not afraid when the mists of prejudice began to rise from around her path, and reveal a country very different from what she had fancied it. She was soon able to perceive that it was far more lovely and full of righteousness and peace than she had supposed. But this anticipates; only I shall have less occasion to speak of Miss St. John by the time she has come into this purer air of the uphill road.

Robert was happier than he ever could have expected to be in his grandmother's house. She treated him like an honoured guest, let him do as he would, and go where he pleased. Betty kept the gable-room in the best of order for him, and, pattern of housemaids, dusted his table without disturbing his papers. For he began to have papers; nor were they occupied only with the mathematics to which he was now giving his chief attention, preparing, with the occasional help of Mr. Innes, for his second session.

He had fits of wandering, though; visited all the old places; spent a week or two more than once at Bodyfauld; rode Mr. Lammie's half-broke filly; revelled in the glories of the summer once more; went out to tea occasionally, or supped with the school-master; and, except going to church on Sunday, which was a weariness to every inch of flesh upon his bones, enjoyed everything.

XVIII. A GRAVE OPENED

One thing that troubled Robert on this his return home, was the discovery that the surroundings of his childhood had deserted him. There they were, as of yore, but they seemed to have nothing to say to him--no remembrance of him. It was not that everything looked small and narrow; it was not that the streets he saw from his new quarters, the gable-room, were awfully still after the roar of Aberdeen, and a passing cart seemed to shudder at the loneliness of the noise itself made; it was that everything seemed to be conscious only of the past and care nothing for him now. The very chairs with their inlaid backs had an embalmed look, and stood as in a dream. He could pass even the walled-up door without emotion, for all the feeling that had been gathered about the knob that admitted him to Mary St. John, had transferred itself to the brass bell-pull at her street-door.

But one day, after standing for a while at the window, looking down on the street where he had first seen the beloved form of Ericson, a certain old mood began to revive in him. He had been working at quadratic equations all the morning; he had been foiled in the attempt to find the true algebraic statement of a very tough question involving various ratios; and, vexed with himself, he had risen to look out, as the only available zeitvertreib. It was one of those rainy days of spring which it needs a hopeful mood to distinguish from autumnal ones--dull, depressing, persistent: there might be sunshine in Mercury or Venus--but on the earth could be none, from his right hand round by India and America to his left; and certainly there was none between--a mood to which all sensitive people are liable who have not yet learned by faith in the everlasting to rule their own spirits. Naturally enough his thoughts turned to the place where he had suffered most--his old room in the garret. Hitherto he had shrunk from visiting it; but now he turned away from the window, went up the steep stairs, with their one sharp corkscrew curve, pushed the door, which clung unwillingly to the floor, and entered. It was a nothing of a place--with a window that looked only to heaven. There was the empty bedstead against the wall, where he had so often kneeled, sending forth vain prayers to a deaf heaven! Had they indeed been vain prayers, and to a deaf heaven? or had they been prayers which a hearing God must answer not according to the haste of the praying child, but according to the calm course of his own infinite law of love?

Here, somehow or other, the things about him did not seem so much absorbed in the past, notwithstanding those untroubled rows of papers bundled in red tape. True, they looked almost awful in their lack of interest and their non-humanity, for there is scarcely anything that absolutely loses interest save the records of money; but his mother's workbox lay behind them. And, strange to say, the side of that bed drew him to kneel down: he did not yet believe that prayer was in vain. If God had not answered him before, that gave no certainty that he would not answer him now. It was, he found, still as rational as it had ever been to hope that God would answer the man that cried to him. This came, I think, from the fact that God had been answering him all the time, although he had not recognized his gifts as answers. Had he not given him Ericson, his intercourse with whom and his familiarity with whose doubts had done anything but quench his thirst after the higher life? For Ericson's, like his own, were true and good and reverent doubts, not merely consistent with but in a great measure springing from devoutness and aspiration. Surely such doubts are far more precious in the sight of God than many beliefs?

He kneeled and sent forth one cry after the Father, arose, and turned towards the shelves, removed some of the bundles of letters, and drew out his mother's little box.

There lay the miniature, still and open-eyed as he had left it. There too lay the bit of paper, brown and dry, with the hymn and the few words of sorrow written thereon. He looked at the portrait, but did not open the folded paper. Then first he thought whether there might not be something more in the box: what he had taken for the bottom seemed to be a tray. He lifted it by two little ears of ribbon, and there, underneath, lay a letter addressed to his father, in the same old-fashioned handwriting as the hymn. It was sealed with brown wax, full of spangles, impressed with a bush of something--he could not tell whether rushes or reeds or flags. Of course he dared not open it. His holy mother's words to his erring father must be sacred even from the eyes of their son. But what other or fitter messenger than himself could bear it to its destination? It was for this that he had been guided to it.

For years he had regarded the finding of his father as the first duty of his manhood: it was as if his mother had now given her sanction to the quest, with this letter to carry to the husband who, however he might have erred, was yet dear to her. He replaced it in the box, but the box no more on the forsaken shelf with its dreary barricade of soulless records. He carried it with him, and laid it in the bottom of his box, which henceforth he kept carefully locked: there lay as it were the pledge of his father's salvation, and his mother's redemption from an eternal grief.

He turned to his equation: it had cleared itself up; he worked it out in five minutes. Betty came to tell him that the dinner was ready, and he went down, peaceful and hopeful, to his grandmother.

While at home he never worked in the evenings: it was bad enough to have to do so at college. Hence nature had a chance with him again. Blessings on the wintry blasts that broke into the first youth of Summer! They made him feel what summer was! Blessings on the cheerless days of rain, and even of sleet and hail, that would shove the reluctant year back into January. The fair face of Spring, with her tears dropping upon her quenchless smiles, peeped in suppressed triumph from behind the growing corn and the budding sallows on the river-bank. Nay, even when the snow came once more in defiance of calendars, it was but a background from which the near genesis should 'stick fiery off.'

In general he had a lonely walk after his lesson with Miss St. John was over: there was no one at Rothieden to whom his heart and intellect both were sufficiently drawn to make a close friendship possible. He had companions, however: Ericson had left his papers with him. The influence of these led him into yet closer sympathy with Nature and all her moods; a sympathy which, even in the stony heart of London, he not only did not lose but never ceased to feel. Even there a breath of wind would not only breathe upon him, it would breathe into him; and a sunset seen from the Strand was lovely as if it had hung over rainbow seas. On his way home he would often go into one of the shops where the neighbours congregated in the evenings, and hold a little talk; and although, with Miss St. John filling his heart, his friend's poems his imagination, and geometry and algebra his intellect, great was the contrast between his own inner mood and the words by which he kept up human relations with his townsfolk, yet in after years he counted it one of the greatest blessings of a lowly birth and education that he knew hearts and feelings which to understand one must have been young amongst them. He would not have had a chance of knowing such as these if he had been the son of Dr. Anderson and born in Aberdeen.

XIX. ROBERT MEDIATES

One lovely evening in the first of the summer Miss St. John had dismissed him earlier than usual, and he had wandered out for a walk. After a round of a couple of miles, he returned by a fir-wood, through which went a pathway. He had heard Mary St. John say that she was going to see the wife of a labourer who lived at the end of this path. In the heart of the trees it was growing very dusky; but when he came to a spot where they stood away from each other a little space, and the blue sky looked in from above with one cloud floating in it from which the rose of the sunset was fading, he seated himself on a little mound of moss that had gathered over an ancient stump by the footpath, and drew out his friend's papers. Absorbed in his reading, he was not aware of an approach till the rustle of silk startled him. He lifted up his eyes, and saw Miss St. John a few yards from him on the pathway. He rose.

'It's almost too dark to read now, isn't it, Robert?' she said.

'Ah!' said. Robert, 'I know this writing so well that I could read it by moonlight. I wish I might read some of it to you. You would like it.'

'May I ask whose it is, then? Poetry, too!'

'It's Mr. Ericson's. But I'm feared he wouldna like me to read it to anybody but myself. And yet--'

'I don't think he would mind me,' returned Miss St. John. 'I do know him a little. It is not as if I were quite a stranger, you know. Did he tell you not?'

'No. But then he never thought of such a thing. I don't know if it's fair, for they are carelessly written, and there are words and lines here and there that I am sure he would alter if he cared for them ae hair.'

'Then if he doesn't care for them, he won't mind my hearing them. There!' she said, seating herself on the stump. 'You sit down on the grass and read me--one at least.'

'You'll remember they were never intended to be read?' urged Robert, not knowing what he was doing, and so fulfilling his destiny.

'I will be as jealous of his honour as ever you can wish,' answered Miss St. John gaily.

Robert laid himself on the grass at her feet, and read:--

MY TWO GENIUSES.

One is a slow and melancholy maid: I know not if she cometh from the skies, Or from the sleepy gulfs, but she will rise Often before me in the twilight shade Holding a bunch of poppies, and a blade Of springing wheat: prostrate my body lies Before her on the turf, the while she ties A fillet of the weed about my head; And in the gaps of sleep I seem to hear A gentle rustle like the stir of corn, And words like odours thronging to my ear: 'Lie still, beloved, still until the morn; Lie still with me upon this rolling sphere, Still till the judgment--thou art faint and worn.'

The other meets me in the public throng: Her hair streams backward from her loose attire; She hath a trumpet and an eye of fire; She points me downward steadily and long-- 'There is thy grave--arise, my son, be strong! Hands are upon thy crown; awake, aspire To immortality; heed not the lyre Of the enchantress, nor her poppy-song; But in the stillness of the summer calm, Tremble for what is godlike in thy being. Listen awhile, and thou shalt hear the psalm Of victory sung by creatures past thy seeing; And from far battle-fields there comes the neighing Of dreadful onset, though the air is balm.'

Maid with the poppies, must I let thee go? Alas! I may not; thou art likewise dear; I am but human, and thou hast a tear, When she hath nought but splendour, and the glow Of a wild energy that mocks the flow Of the poor sympathies which keep us here. Lay past thy poppies, and come twice as near, And I will teach thee, and thou too shalt grow; And thou shalt walk with me in open day Through the rough thoroughfares with quiet grace; And the wild-visaged maid shall lead the way, Timing her footsteps to a gentler pace, As her great orbs turn ever on thy face, Drinking in draughts of loving help alway.

Miss St. John did not speak.

'War ye able to follow him?' asked Robert.

'Quite, I assure you,' she answered, with a tremulousness in her voice which delighted Robert as evidence of his friend's success.

'But they're nae a' so easy to follow, I can tell ye, mem. Just hearken to this,' he said, with some excitement.

When the storm was proudest, And the wind was loudest, I heard the hollow caverns drinking down below; When the stars were bright, And the ground was white, I heard the grasses springing underneath the snow.

Many voices spake-- The river to the lake, The iron-ribbed sky was talking to the sea; And every starry spark Made music with the dark, And said how bright and beautiful everything must be.

'That line, mem,' remarked Robert, ''s only jist scrattit in, as gin he had no intention o' leavin' 't, an' only set it there to keep room for anither. But we'll jist gang on wi' the lave o' 't. I ouchtna to hae interruppit it.'

When the sun was setting, All the clouds were getting Beautiful and silvery in the rising moon; Beneath the leafless trees Wrangling in the breeze, I could hardly see them for the leaves of June.

When the day had ended, And the night descended, I heard the sound of streams that I heard not through the day And every peak afar, Was ready for a star, And they climbed and rolled around until the morning gray.

Then slumber soft and holy Came down upon me slowly; And I went I know not whither, and I lived I know not how; My glory had been banished, For when I woke it vanished, But I waited on it's coming, and I am waiting now.

'There!' said Robert, ending, 'can ye mak onything o' that, Miss St. John?'

'I don't say I can in words,' she answered; 'but I think I could put it all into music.'

'But surely ye maun hae some notion o' what it's aboot afore you can do that.'

'Yes; but I have some notion of what it's about, I think. Just lend it to me; and by the time we have our next lesson, you will see whether I'm not able to show you I understand it. I shall take good care of it,' she added, with a smile, seeing Robert's reluctance to part with it. 'It doesn't matter my having it, you know, now that you've read it to me, I want to make you do it justice.--But it's quite time I were going home. Besides, I really don't think you can see to read any more.'

'Weel, it's better no to try, though I hae them maistly upo' my tongue: I might blunder, and that wad blaud them.--Will you let me go home with you?' he added, in pure tremulous English.

'Certainly, if you like,' she answered; and they walked towards the town.

Robert opened the fountain of his love for Ericson, and let it gush like a river from a hillside. He talked on and on about him, with admiration, gratitude, devotion. And Miss St. John was glad of the veil of the twilight over her face as she listened, for the boy's enthusiasm trembled through her as the wind through an Æolian harp. Poor Robert! He did not know, I say, what he was doing, and so was fulfilling his sacred destiny.

'Bring your manuscripts when you come next,' she said, as they walked along--gently adding, 'I admire your friend's verses very much, and should like to hear more of them.'

'I'll be sure an' do that,' answered Robert, in delight that he had found one to sympathize with him in his worship of Ericson, and that one his other idol.

When they reached the town, Miss St. John, calling to mind its natural propensity to gossip, especially on the evening of a market-day, when the shopkeepers, their labours over, would be standing in a speculative mood at their doors, surrounded by groups of friends and neighbours, felt shy of showing herself on the square with Robert, and proposed that they should part, giving as a by-the-bye reason that she had a little shopping to do as she went home. Too simple to suspect the real reason, but with a heart that delighted in obedience, Robert bade her good-night at once, and took another way.

As he passed the door of Merson the haberdasher's shop, there stood William MacGregor, the weaver, looking at nothing and doing nothing. We have seen something of him before: he was a remarkable compound of good nature and bad temper. People were generally afraid of him, because he had a biting satire at his command, amounting even to wit, which found vent in verse--not altogether despicable even from a literary point of view. The only person he, on his part, was afraid of, was his own wife; for upon her, from lack of apprehension, his keenest irony fell, as he said, like water on a duck's back, and in respect of her he had, therefore, no weapon of offence to strike terror withal. Her dulness was her defence. He liked Robert. When he saw him, he wakened up, laid hold of him by the button, and drew him in.

'Come in, lad,' he said, 'an' tak a pinch. I'm waitin' for Merson.' As he spoke he took from his pocket his mull, made of the end of a ram's horn, and presented it to Robert, who accepted the pledge of friendship. While he was partaking, MacGregor drew himself with some effort upon the counter, saying in a half-comical, half-admonitory tone,

'Weel, and hoo's the mathematics, Robert?'

'Thrivin',' answered Robert, falling into his humour.

'Weel, that's verra weel. Duv ye min', Robert, hoo, whan ye was aboot the age o' aucht year aul', ye cam to me ance at my shop aboot something yer gran'mither, honest woman, wantit, an' I, by way o' takin' my fun o' ye, said to ye, “Robert, ye hae grown desperate; ye're a man clean; ye hae gotten the breeks on.” An' says ye, “Ay, Mr. MacGregor, I want naething noo but a watch an' a wife”?'

'I doobt I've forgotten a' aboot it, Mr. MacGregor,' answered Robert. 'But I've made some progress, accordin' to your story, for Dr. Anderson, afore I cam hame, gae me a watch. An' a fine crater it is, for it aye does its best, an' sae I excuse its shortcomin's.'

'There's just ae thing, an' nae anither,' returned the manufacturer, 'that I cannot excuse in a watch. Gin a watch gangs ower fest, ye fin' 't oot. Gin she gangs ower slow, ye fin' 't oot, an' ye can aye calculate upo' 't correck eneuch for maitters sublunairy, as Mr. Maccleary says. An' gin a watch stops a'thegither, ye ken it's failin', an' ye ken whaur it sticks, an' a' 'at ye say 's “Tut, tut, de'il hae 't for a watch!” But there's ae thing that God nor man canna bide in a watch, an' that's whan it stan's still for a bittock, an' syne gangs on again. Ay, ay! tic, tic, tic! wi' a fair face and a leein' hert. It wad gar ye believe it was a' richt, and time for anither tum'ler, whan it's twal o'clock, an' the kirkyaird fowk thinkin' aboot risin'. Fegs, I had a watch o' my father's, an' I regairdit it wi' a reverence mair like a human bein': the second time it played me that pliskie, I dang oot its guts upo' the loupin'-on-stane at the door o' the chop. But lat the watch sit: whaur's the wife? Ye canna be a man yet wantin' the wife--by yer ain statement.'

'The watch cam unsoucht, Mr. MacGregor, an' I'm thinkin' sae maun the wife,' answered Robert, laughing.

'Preserve me for ane frae a wife that comes unsoucht,' returned the weaver. 'But, my lad, there may be some wives that winna come whan they are soucht. Preserve me frae them too!--Noo, maybe ye dinna ken what I mean--but tak ye tent what ye're aboot. Dinna ye think 'at ilka bonnie lass 'at may like to haud a wark wi' ye 's jist ready to mairry ye aff han' whan ye say, “Noo, my dawtie.”--An' ae word mair, Robert: Young men, especially braw lads like yersel', 's unco ready to fa' in love wi' women fit to be their mithers. An' sae ye see--'

He was interrupted by the entrance of a girl. She had a shawl over her head, notwithstanding it was summer weather, and crept in hesitatingly, as if she were not quite at one with herself as to her coming purchase. Approaching a boy behind the counter on the opposite side of the shop, she asked for something, and he proceeded to serve her. Robert could not help thinking, from the one glimpse of her face he had got through the dusk, that he had seen her before. Suddenly the vision of an earthen floor with a pool of brown sunlight upon it, bare feet, brown hair, and soft eyes, mingled with a musk odour wafted from Arabian fairyland, rose before him: it was Jessie Hewson.

'I ken that lassie,' he said, and moved to get down from the counter on which he too had seated himself.

'Na, na,' whispered the manufacturer, laying, like the Ancient Mariner, a brown skinny hand of restraint upon Robert's arm--'na, na, never heed her. Ye maunna speyk to ilka lass 'at ye ken.--Poor thing! she's been doin' something wrang, to gang slinkin' aboot i' the gloamin' like a baukie (bat), wi' her plaid ower her heid. Dinna fash wi' her.'

'Nonsense!' returned Robert, with indignation. 'What for shouldna I speik till her? She's a decent lassie--a dochter o' James Hewson, the cottar at Bodyfauld. I ken her fine.'

He said this in a whisper; but the girl seemed to hear it, for she left the shop with a perturbation which the dimness of the late twilight could not conceal. Robert hesitated no longer, but followed her, heedless of the louder expostulations of MacGregor. She was speeding away down the street, but he took longer strides than she, and was almost up with her, when she drew her shawl closer about her head, and increased her pace.

'Jessie!' said Robert, in a tone of expostulation. But she made no answer. Her head sunk lower on her bosom, and she hurried yet faster. He gave a long stride or two and laid his hand on her shoulder. She stood still, trembling.

'Jessie, dinna ye ken me--Robert Faukner? Dinna be feart at me. What's the maitter wi' ye, 'at ye winna speik till a body? Hoo's a' the fowk at hame?'

She burst out crying, cast one look into Robert's face, and fled. What a change was in that face? The peach-colour was gone from her cheek; it was pale and thin. Her eyes were hollow, with dark shadows under them, the shadows of a sad sunset. A foreboding of the truth arose in his heart, and the tears rushed up into his eyes. The next moment the eidolon of Mary St. John, moving gracious and strong, clothed in worship and the dignity which is its own defence, appeared beside that of Jessie Hewson, her bowed head shaken with sobs, and her weak limbs urged to ungraceful flight. As if walking in the vision of an eternal truth, he went straight to Captain Forsyth's door.

'I want to speak to Miss St. John, Isie,' said Robert.

'She'll be doon in a minit.'

'But isna yer mistress i' the drawin'-room?--I dinna want to see her.'

'Ow, weel,' said the girl, who was almost fresh from the country, 'jist rin up the stair, an' chap at the door o' her room.'

With the simplicity of a child, for what a girl told him to do must be right, Robert sped up the stair, his heart going like a fire-engine. He had never approached Mary's room from this side, but instinct or something else led him straight to her door. He knocked.

'Come in,' she said, never doubting it was the maid, and Robert entered.

She was brushing her hair by the light of a chamber candle. Robert was seized with awe, and his limbs trembled. He could have kneeled before her--not to beg forgiveness, he did not think of that--but to worship, as a man may worship a woman. It is only a strong, pure heart like Robert's that ever can feel all the inroad of the divine mystery of womanhood. But he did not kneel. He had a duty to perform. A flush rose in Miss St. John's face, and sank away, leaving it pale. It was not that she thought once of her own condition, with her hair loose on her shoulders, but, able only to conjecture what had brought him thither, she could not but regard Robert's presence with dismay. She stood with her ivory brush in her right hand uplifted, and a great handful of hair in her left. She was soon relieved, however, although what with his contemplated intercession, the dim vision of Mary's lovely face between the masses of her hair, and the lavender odour that filled the room--perhaps also a faint suspicion of impropriety sufficient to give force to the rest--Robert was thrown back into the abyss of his mother-tongue, and out of this abyss talked like a Behemoth.

'Robert!' said Mary, in a tone which, had he not been so eager after his end, he might have interpreted as one of displeasure.

'Ye maun hearken till me, mem.--Whan I was oot at Bodyfauld,' he began methodically, and Mary, bewildered, gave one hasty brush to her handful of hair and again stood still: she could imagine no connection between this meeting and their late parting--'Whan I was was oot at Bodyfauld ae simmer, I grew acquant wi' a bonnie lassie there, the dochter o' Jeames Hewson, an honest cottar, wi' Shakspeare an' the Arabian Nichts upo' a skelf i' the hoose wi' 'im. I gaed in ae day whan I wasna weel; an' she jist ministert to me, as nane ever did but yersel', mem. An' she was that kin' an' mither-like to the wee bit greitin' bairnie 'at she had to tak care o' 'cause her mither was oot wi' the lave shearin'! Her face was jist like a simmer day, an' weel I likit the luik o' the lassie!--I met her again the nicht. Ye never saw sic a change. A white face, an' nothing but greitin' to come oot o' her. She ran frae me as gin I had been the de'il himsel'. An' the thocht o' you, sae bonnie an' straucht an' gran', cam ower me.'

Yielding to a masterful impulse, Robert did kneel now. As if sinner, and not mediator, he pressed the hem of her garment to his lips.

'Dinna be angry at me, Miss St. John,' he pleaded, 'but be mercifu' to the lassie. Wha's to help her that can no more luik a man i' the face, but the clear-e'ed lass that wad luik the sun himsel' oot o' the lift gin he daured to say a word against her. It's ae woman that can uphaud anither. Ye ken what I mean, an' I needna say mair.'

He rose and turned to leave the room.

Bewildered and doubtful, Miss St. John did not know what to answer, but felt that she must make some reply.

'You haven't told me where to find the girl, or what you want me to do with her.'

'I'll fin' oot whaur she bides,' he said, moving again towards the door.

'But what am I to do with her, Robert?'

'That's your pairt. Ye maun fin' oot what to do wi' her. I canna tell ye that. But gin I was you, I wad gie her a kiss to begin wi'. She's nane o' yer brazen-faced hizzies, yon. A kiss wad be the savin' o' her.'

'But you may be--. But I have nothing to go upon. She would resent my interference.'

'She's past resentin' onything. She was gaein' aboot the toon like ane o' the deid 'at hae naething to say to onybody, an' naebody onything to say to them. Gin she gangs on like that she'll no be alive lang.'

That night Jessie Hewson disappeared. A mile or two up the river under a high bank, from which the main current had receded, lay an awful, swampy place--full of reeds, except in the middle where was one round space full of dark water and mud. Near this Jessie Hewson was seen about an hour after Robert had thus pled for her with his angel.

The event made a deep impression upon Robert. The last time that he saw them, James and his wife were as cheerful as usual, and gave him a hearty welcome. Jessie was in service, and doing well, they said. The next time he opened the door of the cottage it was like the entrance to a haunted tomb. Not a smile was in the place. James's cheeriness was all gone. He was sitting at the table with his head leaning on his hand. His Bible was open before him, but he was not reading a word. His wife was moving listlessly about. They looked just as Jessie had looked that night--as if they had died long ago, but somehow or other could not get into their graves and be at rest. The child Jessie had nursed with such care was toddling about, looking rueful with loss. George had gone to America, and the whole of that family's joy had vanished from the earth.

The subject was not resumed between Miss St. John and Robert. The next time he saw her, he knew by her pale troubled face that she had heard the report that filled the town; and she knew by his silence that it had indeed reference to the same girl of whom he had spoken to her. The music would not go right that evening. Mary was distraite, and Robert was troubled. It was a week or two before there came a change. When the turn did come, over his being love rushed up like a spring-tide from the ocean of the Infinite.

He was accompanying her piano with his violin. He made blunders, and her playing was out of heart. They stopped as by consent, and a moment's silence followed. All at once she broke out with something Robert had never heard before. He soon found that it was a fantasy upon Ericson's poem. Ever through a troubled harmony ran a silver thread of melody from far away. It was the caverns drinking from the tempest overhead, the grasses growing under the snow, the stars making music with the dark, the streams filling the night with the sounds the day had quenched, the whispering call of the dreams left behind in 'the fields of sleep,'--in a word, the central life pulsing in aeonian peace through the outer ephemeral storms. At length her voice took up the theme. The silvery thread became song, and through all the opposing, supporting harmonies she led it to the solution of a close in which the only sorrow was in the music itself, for its very life is an 'endless ending.' She found Robert kneeling by her side. As she turned from the instrument his head drooped over her knee. She laid her hand on his clustering curls, bethought herself, and left the room. Robert wandered out as in a dream. At midnight he found himself on a solitary hill-top, seated in the heather, with a few tiny fir-trees about him, and the sounds of a wind, ethereal as the stars overhead, flowing through their branches: he heard the sound of it, but it did not touch him.

Where was God?

In him and his question.

XX. ERICSON LOSES TO WIN

If Mary St. John had been an ordinary woman, and if, notwithstanding, Robert had been in love with her, he would have done very little in preparation for the coming session. But although she now possessed him, although at times he only knew himself as loving her, there was such a mountain air of calm about her, such an outgoing divinity of peace, such a largely moulded harmony of being, that he could not love her otherwise than grandly. For her sake, weary with loving her, he would yet turn to his work, and, to be worthy of her, or rather, for he never dreamed of being worthy of her, to be worthy of leave to love her, would forget her enough to lay hold of some abstract truth of lines, angles, or symbols. A strange way of being in love, reader? You think so? I would there were more love like it: the world would be centuries nearer its redemption if a millionth part of the love in it were of the sort. All I insist, however, on my reader's believing is, that it showed, in a youth like Robert, not less but more love that he could go against love's sweetness for the sake of love's greatness. Literally, not figuratively, Robert would kiss the place where her foot had trod; but I know that once he rose from such a kiss 'to trace the hyperbola by means of a string.'

It had been arranged between Ericson and Robert, in Miss Napier's parlour, the old lady knitting beside, that Ericson should start, if possible, a week earlier than usual, and spend the difference with Robert at Rothieden. But then the old lady had opened her mouth and spoken. And I firmly believe, though little sign of tenderness passed between them, it was with an elder sister's feeling for Letty's admiration of the 'lan'less laird,' that she said as follows:--

'Dinna ye think, Mr. Ericson, it wad be but fair to come to us neist time? Mistress Faukner, honest lady, an' lang hae I kent her, 's no sae auld a frien' to you, Mr. Ericson, as oorsel's--nae offence to her, ye ken. A'body canna be frien's to a'body, ane as lang 's anither, ye ken.'

''Deed I maun alloo, Miss Naper,' interposed Robert, 'it's only fair. Ye see, Mr. Ericson, I cud see as muckle o' ye almost, the tae way as the tither. Miss Naper maks me welcome as weel's you.'

'An' I will mak ye welcome, Robert, as lang's ye're a gude lad, as ye are, and gang na efter--nae ill gait. But lat me hear o' yer doin' as sae mony young gentlemen do, espeacially whan they're ta'en up by their rich relations, an', public-hoose as this is, I'll close the door o' 't i' yer face.'

'Bless me, Miss Naper!' said Robert, 'what hae I dune to set ye at me that gait? Faith, I dinna ken what ye mean.'

'Nae mair do I, laddie. I hae naething against ye whatever. Only ye see auld fowk luiks aheid, an' wad fain be as sure o' what's to come as o' what's gane.'

'Ye maun bide for that, I doobt,' said Robert.

'Laddie,' retorted Miss Napier, 'ye hae mair sense nor ye hae ony richt till. Haud the tongue o' ye. Mr. Ericson 's to come here neist.'

And the old lady laughed such good humour into her stocking-sole, that the foot destined to wear it ought never to have been cold while it lasted. So it was then settled; and a week before Robert was to start for Aberdeen, Ericson walked into The Boar's Head. Half-an-hour after that, Crookit Caumill was shown into the ga'le-room with the message to Maister Robert that Maister Ericson was come, and wanted to see him.

Robert pitched Hutton's Mathematics into the grate, sprung to his feet, all but embraced Crookit Caumill on the spot, and was deterred only by the perturbed look the man wore. Crookit Caumill was a very human creature, and hadn't a fault but the drink, Miss Napier said. And very little of that he would have had if she had been as active as she was willing.

'What's the maitter, Caumill?' asked Robert, in considerable alarm.

'Ow, naething, sir,' returned Campbell.

'What gars ye look like that, than?' insisted Robert.

'Ow, naething. But whan Miss Letty cried doon the close upo' me, she had her awpron till her een, an' I thocht something bude to be wrang; but I hadna the hert to speir.'

Robert darted to the door, and rushed to the inn, leaving Caumill describing iambi on the road behind him.

When he reached The Boar's Head there was nobody to be seen. He darted up the stair to the room where he had first waited upon Ericson.

Three or four maids stood at the door. He asked no question, but went in, a dreadful fear at his heart. Two of the sisters and Dr. Gow stood by the bed.

Ericson lay upon it, clear-eyed, and still. His cheek was flushed. The doctor looked round as Robert entered.

'Robert,' he said, 'you must keep your friend here quiet. He's broken a blood-vessel--walked too much, I suppose. He'll be all right soon, I hope; but we can't be too careful. Keep him quiet--that's the main thing. He mustn't speak a word.'

So saying he took his leave.

Ericson held out his thin hand. Robert grasped it. Ericson's lips moved as if he would speak.

'Dinna speik, Mr. Ericson,' said Miss Letty, whose tears were flowing unheeded down her cheeks, 'dinna speik. We a' ken what ye mean an' what ye want wi'oot that.'

Then she turned to Robert, and said in a whisper,

'Dr. Gow wadna hae ye sent for; but I kent weel eneuch 'at he wad be a' the quaieter gin ye war here. Jist gie a chap upo' the flure gin ye want onything, an' I'll be wi' ye in twa seconds.'

The sisters went away. Robert drew a chair beside the bed, and once more was nurse to his friend. The doctor had already bled him at the arm: such was the ordinary mode of treatment then.

Scarcely was he seated, when Ericson spoke--a smile flickering over his worn face.

'Robert, my boy,' he said.

'Dinna speak,' said Robert, in alarm; 'dinna speak, Mr. Ericson.'

'Nonsense,' returned Ericson, feebly. 'They're making a work about nothing. I've done as much twenty times since I saw you last, and I'm not dead yet. But I think it's coming.'

'What's coming?' asked Robert, rising in alarm.

'Nothing,' answered Ericson, soothingly,--'only death.--I should like to see Miss St. John once before I die. Do you think she would come and see me if I were really dying?'

'I'm sure she wad. But gin ye speik like this, Miss Letty winna lat me come near ye, no to say her. Oh, Mr. Ericson! gin ye dee, I sanna care to live.'

Bethinking himself that such was not the way to keep Ericson quiet, he repressed his emotion, sat down behind the curtain, and was silent. Ericson fell fast asleep. Robert crept from the room, and telling Miss Letty that he would return presently, went to Miss St. John.

'How can I go to Aberdeen without him?' he thought as he walked down the street.

Neither was a guide to the other; but the questioning of two may give just the needful points by which the parallax of a truth may be gained.

'Mr. Ericson's here, Miss St. John,' he said, the moment he was shown into her presence.

Her face flushed. Robert had never seen her look so beautiful.

'He's verra ill,' he added.

Her face grew pale--very pale.

'He asked if I thought you would go and see him--that is if he were going to die.'

A sunset flush, but faint as on the clouds of the east, rose over her pallor.

'I will go at once,' she said, rising.

'Na, na,' returned Robert, hastily. 'It has to be manage. It's no to be dune a' in a hurry. For ae thing, there's Dr. Gow says he maunna speak ae word; and for anither, there's Miss Letty 'ill jist be like a watch-dog to haud a'body oot ower frae 'im. We maun bide oor time. But gin ye say ye'll gang, that 'll content him i' the meantime. I'll tell him.'

'I will go any moment,' she said. 'Is he very ill?'

'I'm afraid he is. I doobt I'll hae to gang to Aberdeen withoot him.'

A week after, though he was better, his going was out of the question. Robert wanted to stay with him, but he would not hear of it. He would follow in a week or so, he said, and Robert must start fair with the rest of the semies.

But all the removal he was ever able to bear was to the 'red room,' the best in the house, opening, as I have already mentioned, from an outside stair in the archway. They put up a great screen inside the door, and there the lan'less laird lay like a lord.

XXI. SHARGAR ASPIRES

Robert's heart was dreary when he got on the box-seat of the mail-coach at Rothieden--it was yet drearier when he got down at The Royal Hotel in the street of Ben Accord--and it was dreariest of all when he turned his back on Ericson's, and entered his own room at Mrs. Fyvie's.

Shargar had met him at the coach. Robert had scarcely a word to say to him. And Shargar felt as dreary as Robert when he saw him sit down, and lay his head on the table without a word.

'What's the maitter wi' ye, Robert?' he faltered out at last. 'Gin ye dinna speyk to me, I'll cut my throat. I will, faith!'

'Haud yer tongue wi' yer nonsense, Shargar. Mr. Ericson's deein'.'

'O lord!' said Shargar, and said nothing more for the space of ten minutes.

Then he spoke again--slowly and sententiously.

'He hadna you to tak care o' him, Robert. Whaur is he?'

'At The Boar's Heid.'

'That's weel. He'll be luikit efter there.'

'A body wad like to hae their ain han' in 't, Shargar.'

'Ay. I wiss we had him here again.'

The ice of trouble thus broken, the stream of talk flowed more freely.

'Hoo are ye gettin' on at the schule, man?' asked Robert.

'Nae that ill,' answered Shargar. 'I was at the heid o' my class yesterday for five meenits.'

'An' hoo did ye like it?'

'Man, it was fine. I thocht I was a gentleman a' at ance.'

'Haud ye at it, man,' said Robert, as if from the heights of age and experience, 'and maybe ye will be a gentleman some day.'

'Is 't poassible, Robert? A crater like me grow intil a gentleman?' said Shargar, with wide eyes.

'What for no?' returned Robert.

'Eh, man!' said Shargar.

He stood up, sat down again, and was silent.

'For ae thing,' resumed Robert, after a pause, during which he had been pondering upon the possibilities of Shargar's future--'for ae thing, I doobt whether Dr. Anderson wad hae ta'en ony fash aboot ye, gin he hadna thocht ye had the makin' o' a gentleman i' ye.'

'Eh, man!' said Shargar.

He stood up again, sat down again, and was finally silent.

Next day Robert went to see Dr. Anderson, and told him about Ericson. The doctor shook his head, as doctors have done in such cases from Æsculapius downwards. Robert pressed no further questions.

'Will he be taken care of where he is?' asked the doctor.

'Guid care o',' answered Robert.

'Has he any money, do you think?'

'I hae nae doobt he has some, for he's been teachin' a' the summer. The like o' him maun an' will work whether they're fit or no.'

'Well, at all events, you write, Robert, and give him the hint that he's not to fash himself about money, for I have more than he'll want. And you may just take the hint yourself at the same time, Robert, my boy,' he added in, if possible, a yet kinder tone.

Robert's way of showing gratitude was the best way of all. He returned kindness with faith.

'Gin I be in ony want, doctor, I'll jist rin to ye at ance. An' gin I want ower muckle ye maun jist say na.'

'That's a good fellow. You take things as a body means them.'

'But hae ye naething ye wad like me to do for ye this session, sir?'

'No. I won't have you do anything but your own work. You have more to do than you had last year. Mind your work; and as often as you get tired over your books, shut them up and come to me. You may bring Shargar with you sometimes, but we must take care and not make too much of him all at once.'

'Ay, ay, doctor. But he's a fine crater, Shargar, an' I dinna think he'll be that easy to blaud. What do you think he's turnin' ower i' that reid heid o' his noo?'

'I can't tell that. But there's something to come out of the red head, I do believe. What is he thinking of?'

'Whether it be possible for him ever to be a gentleman. Noo I tak that for a good sign i' the likes o' him.'

'No doubt of it. What did you say to him?'

'I tellt him 'at hoo I didna think ye wad hae ta'en sae muckle fash gin ye hadna had some houps o' the kin' aboot him.'

'You said well. Tell him from me that I expect him to be a gentleman. And by the way, Robert, do try a little, as I think I said to you once before, to speak English. I don't mean that you should give up Scotch, you know.'

'Weel, sir, I hae been tryin'; but what am I to do whan ye speyk to me as gin ye war my ain father? I canna min' upo' a word o' English whan ye do that.'

Dr. Anderson laughed, but his eyes glittered.

Robert found Shargar busy over his Latin version. With a 'Weel, Shargar,' he took his books and sat down. A few moments after, Shargar lifted his head, stared a while at Robert, and then said,

'Duv you railly think it, Robert?'

'Think what? What are ye haverin' at, ye gowk?'

'Duv ye think 'at I ever could grow intil a gentleman?'

'Dr. Anderson says he expecs 't o' ye.'

'Eh, man!'

A long pause followed, and Shargar spoke again.

'Hoo am I to begin, Robert?'

'Begin what?'

'To be a gentleman.'

Robert scratched his head, like Brutus, and at length became oracular.

'Speyk the truth,' he said.

'I'll do that. But what aboot--my father?'

'Naebody 'ill cast up yer father to ye. Ye need hae nae fear o' that.'

'My mither, than?' suggested Shargar, with hesitation.

'Ye maun haud yer face to the fac'.'

'Ay, ay. But gin they said onything, ye ken--aboot her.'

'Gin ony man-body says a word agen yer mither, ye maun jist knock him doon upo' the spot.'

'But I michtna be able.'

'Ye could try, ony gait.'

'He micht knock me down, ye ken.'

'Weel, gae doon than.'

'Ay.'

This was all the instruction Robert ever gave Shargar in the duties of a gentleman. And I doubt whether Shargar sought further enlightenment by direct question of any one. He worked harder than ever; grew cleanly in his person, even to fastidiousness; tried to speak English; and a wonderful change gradually, but rapidly, passed over his outer man. He grew taller and stronger, and as he grew stronger, his legs grew straighter, till the defect of approximating knees, the consequence of hardship, all but vanished. His hair became darker, and the albino look less remarkable, though still he would remind one of a vegetable grown in a cellar.

Dr. Anderson thought it well that he should have another year at the grammar-school before going to college.--Robert now occupied Ericson's room, and left his own to Shargar.

Robert heard every week from Miss St. John about Ericson. Her reports varied much; but on the whole he got a little better as the winter went on. She said that the good women at The Boar's Head paid him every attention: she did not say that almost the only way to get him to eat was to carry him delicacies which she had prepared with her own hands.

She had soon overcome the jealousy with which Miss Letty regarded her interest in their guest, and before many days had passed she would walk into the archway and go up to his room without seeing any one, except the sister whom she generally found there. By what gradations their intimacy grew I cannot inform my reader, for on the events lying upon the boundary of my story, I have received very insufficient enlightenment; but the result it is easy to imagine. I have already hinted at an early disappointment of Miss St. John. She had grown greatly since, and her estimate of what she had lost had altered considerably in consequence. But the change was more rapid after she became acquainted with Ericson. She would most likely have found the young man she thought she was in love with in the days gone by a very commonplace person now. The heart which she had considered dead to the world had, even before that stormy night in the old house, begun to expostulate against its owner's mistake, by asserting a fair indifference to that portion of its past history. And now, to her large nature the simplicity, the suffering, the patience, the imagination, the grand poverty of Ericson, were irresistibly attractive. Add to this that she became his nurse, and soon saw that he was not indifferent to her--and if she fell in love with him as only a full-grown woman can love, without Ericson's lips saying anything that might not by Love's jealousy be interpreted as only of grateful affection, why should she not?

And what of Marjory Lindsay? Ericson had not forgotten her. But the brightest star must grow pale as the sun draws near; and on Ericson there were two suns rising at once on the low sea-shore of life whereon he had been pacing up and down moodily for three-and-twenty years, listening evermore to the unprogressive rise and fall of the tidal waves, all talking of the eternal, all unable to reveal it--the sun of love and the sun of death. Mysie and he had never met. She pleased his imagination; she touched his heart with her helplessness; but she gave him no welcome to the shrine of her beauty: he loved through admiration and pity. He broke no faith to her; for he had never offered her any save in looks, and she had not accepted it. She was but a sickly plant grown in a hot-house. On his death-bed he found a woman a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land! A strong she-angel with mighty wings, Mary St. John came behind him as he fainted out of life, tempered the burning heat of the Sun of Death, and laid him to sleep in the cool twilight of her glorious shadow. In the stead of trouble about a wilful, thoughtless girl, he found repose and protection and motherhood in a great-hearted woman.

For Ericson's sake, Robert made some effort to preserve the acquaintance of Mr. Lindsay and his daughter. But he could hardly keep up a conversation with Mr. Lindsay, and Mysie showed herself utterly indifferent to him even in the way of common friendship. He told her of Ericson's illness: she said she was sorry to hear it, and looked miles away. He could never get within a certain atmosphere of--what shall I call it? avertedness that surrounded her. She had always lived in a dream of unrealities; and the dream had almost devoured her life.

One evening Shargar was later than usual in coming home from the walk, or ramble rather, without which he never could settle down to his work. He knocked at Robert's door.

'Whaur do ye think I've been, Robert?'

'Hoo suld I ken, Shargar?' answered Robert, puzzling over a problem.

'I've been haein' a glaiss wi' Jock Mitchell.'

'Wha's Jock Mitchell?'

'My brither Sandy's groom, as I tellt ye afore.'

'Ye dinna think I can min' a' your havers, Shargar. Whaur was the comin' gentleman whan ye gaed to drink wi' a chield like that, wha, gin my memory serves me, ye tauld me yersel' was i' the mids o' a' his maister's deevilry?'

'Yer memory serves ye weel eneuch to be doon upo' me,' said Shargar. 'But there's a bit wordy 'at they read at the cathedral kirk the last Sunday 'at's stucken to me as gin there was something by ordinar' in 't.'

'What's that?' asked Robert, pretending to go on with his calculations all the time.

'Ow, nae muckle; only this: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”--I took a lesson frae Jeck the giant-killer, wi' the Welsh giant--was 't Blunderbore they ca'd him?--an' poored the maist o' my glaiss doon my breist. It wasna like ink; it wadna du my sark ony ill.'

'But what garred ye gang wi' 'im at a'? He wasna fit company for a gentleman.'

'A gentleman 's some saft gin he be ony the waur o' the company he gangs in till. There may be rizzons, ye ken. Ye needna du as they du. Jock Mitchell was airin' Reid Rorie an' Black Geordie. An' says I--for I wantit to ken whether I was sic a breme-buss (broom-bush) as I used to be--says I, “Hoo are ye, Jock Mitchell?” An' says Jock, “Brawly. Wha the deevil are ye?” An' says I, “Nae mair o' a deevil nor yersel', Jock Mitchell, or Alexander, Baron Rothie, either--though maybe that's no little o' ane.” “Preserve me!” cried Jock, “it's Shargar.”--“Nae mair o' that, Jock,” says I. “Gin I bena a gentleman, or a' be dune,”--an' there I stack, for I saw I was a muckle fule to lat oot onything o' the kin' to Jock. And sae he seemed to think, too, for he brak oot wi' a great guffaw; an' to win ower 't, I jined, an' leuch as gin naething was farrer aff frae my thochts than ever bein' a gentleman. “Whaur do ye pit up, Jock?” I said. “Oot by here,” he answert, “at Luckie Maitlan's.”--“That's a queer place for a baron to put up, Jock,” says I. “There's rizzons,” says he, an' lays his forefinger upo' the side o' 's nose, o' whilk there was hardly eneuch to haud it ohn gane intil the opposit ee. “We're no far frae there,” says I--an' deed I can hardly tell ye, Robert, what garred me say sae, but I jist wantit to ken what that gentleman-brither o' mine was efter; “tak the horse hame,” says I--“I'll jist loup upo' Black Geordie--an' we'll hae a glaiss thegither. I'll stan' treat.” Sae he gae me the bridle, an' I lap on. The deevil tried to get a moufu' o' my hip, but, faith! I was ower swack for 'im; an' awa we rade.'

'I didna ken 'at ye cud ride, Shargar.'

'Hoots! I cudna help it. I was aye takin' the horse to the watter at The Boar's Heid, or The Royal Oak, or Lucky Happit's, or The Aucht an' Furty. That's hoo I cam to ken Jock sae weel. We war guid eneuch frien's whan I didna care for leein' or sweirin', an' sic like.'

'And what on earth did ye want wi' 'im noo?'

'I tell ye I wantit to ken what that ne'er-do-weel brither o' mine was efter. I had seen the horses stan'in' aboot twa or three times i' the gloamin'; an' Sandy maun be aboot ill gin he be aboot onything.'

'What can 't maitter to you, Shargar, what a man like him 's aboot?'

'Weel, ye see, Robert, my mither aye broucht me up to ken a' 'at fowk was aboot, for she said ye cud never tell whan it micht turn oot to the weelfaur o' yer advantage--gran' words!--I wonner whaur she forgathert wi' them. But she was a terrible wuman, my mither, an' kent a heap o' things--mair nor 'twas gude to ken, maybe. She gaed aboot the country sae muckle, an' they say the gipsies she gaed amang 's a dreadfu' auld fowk, an' hae the wisdom o' the Egyptians 'at Moses wad hae naething to do wi'.'

'Whaur is she noo?'

'I dinna ken. She may turn up ony day.'

'There's ae thing, though, Shargar: gin ye want to be a gentleman, ye maunna gang keekin' that gate intil ither fowk's affairs.'

'Weel, I maun gie 't up. I winna say a word o' what Jock Mitchell tellt me aboot Lord Sandy.'

'Ow, say awa'.'

'Na, na; ye wadna like to hear aboot ither fowk's affairs. My mither tellt me he did verra ill efter Watterloo till a fremt (stranger) lass at Brussels. But that's neither here nor there. I maun set aboot my version, or I winna get it dune the nicht.'

'What is Lord Sandy after? What did the rascal tell you? Why do you make such a mystery of it?' said Robert, authoritatively, and in his best English.

''Deed I cudna mak naething o' 'm. He winkit an' he mintit (hinted) an' he gae me to unnerstan' 'at the deevil was efter some lass or ither, but wha--my lad was as dumb 's the graveyard about that. Gin I cud only win at that, maybe I cud play him a plisky. But he coupit ower three glasses o' whusky, an' the mair he drank the less he wad say. An' sae I left him.'

'Well, take care what you're about, Shargar. I don't think Dr. Anderson would like you to be in such company,' said Robert; and Shargar departed to his own room and his version.

Towards the end of the session Miss St. John's reports of Ericson were worse. Yet he was very hopeful himself, and thought he was getting better fast. Every relapse he regarded as temporary; and when he got a little better, thought he had recovered his original position. It was some relief to Miss St. John to communicate her anxiety to Robert.

After the distribution of the prizes, of which he gained three, Robert went the same evening to visit Dr. Anderson, intending to go home the next day. The doctor gave him five golden sovereigns--a rare sight in Scotland. Robert little thought in what service he was about to spend them.

XXII. ROBERT IN ACTION

It was late when he left his friend. As he walked through the Gallowgate, an ancient narrow street, full of low courts, some one touched him upon the arm. He looked round. It was a young woman. He turned again to walk on.

'Mr Faukner,' she said, in a trembling voice, which Robert thought he had heard before.

He stopped.

'I don't know you,' he said. 'I can't see your face. Tell me who you are.'

She returned no answer, but stood with her head aside. He could see that her hands shook.

'What do you want with me--if you won't say who you are?'

'I want to tell you something,' she said; 'but I canna speyk here. Come wi' me.'

'I won't go with you without knowing who you are or where you're going to take me.'

'Dinna ye ken me?' she said pitifully, turning a little towards the light of the gas-lamp, and looking up in his face.

'It canna be Jessie Hewson?' said Robert, his heart swelling at the sight of the pale worn countenance of the girl.

'I was Jessie Hewson ance,' she said, 'but naebody here kens me by that name but yersel'. Will ye come in? There's no a crater i' the hoose but mysel'.'

Robert turned at once. 'Go on,' he said.

She led the way up a narrow stone stair between two houses. A door high up in the gable admitted them. The boards bent so much under his weight that Robert feared the floor would fall.

'Bide ye there, sir, till I fess a licht,' she said.

This was Robert's first introduction to a phase of human life with which he became familiar afterwards.

'Mind hoo ye gang, sir,' she resumed, returning with a candle. 'There's nae flurin' there. Haud i' the middle efter me, or ye'll gang throu.'

She led him into a room, with nothing in it but a bed, a table, and a chair. On the table was a half-made shirt. In the bed lay a tiny baby, fast asleep. It had been locked up alone in the dreary garret. Robert approached to look at the child, for his heart felt very warm to poor Jessie.

'A bonnie bairnie,' he said,

'Isna he, sir? Think o' 'im comin' to me! Nobody can tell the mercy o' 't. Isna it strange that the verra sin suld bring an angel frae haven upo' the back o' 't to uphaud an' restore the sinner? Fowk thinks it's a punishment; but eh me! it's a mercifu' ane. It's a wonner he didna think shame to come to me. But he cam to beir my shame.'

Robert wondered at her words. She talked of her sin with such a meek openness! She looked her shame in the face, and acknowledged it hers. Had she been less weak and worn, perhaps she could not have spoken thus.

'But what am I aboot!' she said, checking herself. 'I didna fess ye here to speyk aboot mysel'. He's efter mair mischeef, and gin onything cud be dune to haud him frae 't--'

'Wha's efter mischeef, Jessie?' interrupted Robert.

'Lord Rothie. He's gaein' aff the nicht in Skipper Hornbeck's boat to Antwerp, I think they ca' 't, an' a bonnie young leddy wi' 'im. They war to sail wi' the first o' the munelicht.--Surely I'm nae ower late,' she added, going to the window. 'Na, the mune canna be up yet.'

'Na,' said Robert; 'I dinna think she rises muckle afore twa o'clock the nicht. But hoo ken ye? Are ye sure o' 't? It's an awfu' thing to think o'.'

'To convence ye, I maun jist tell ye the trowth. The hoose we're in hasna a gude character. We're middlin' dacent up here; but the lave o' the place is dreadfu'. Eh for the bonnie leys o' Bodyfauld! Gin ye see my father, tell him I'm nane waur than I was.'

'They think ye droont i' the Dyer's Pot, as they ca' 't.'

'There I am again!' she said--'miles awa' an' nae time to be lost!--My lord has a man they ca' Mitchell. Ower weel I ken him. There's a wuman doon the stair 'at he comes to see whiles; an' twa or three nichts ago, I heard them lauchin' thegither. Sae I hearkened. They war baith some fou, I'm thinkin'. I cudna tell ye a' 'at they said. That's a punishment noo, gin ye like--to see and hear the warst o' yer ain ill doin's. He tellt the limmer a heap o' his lord's secrets. Ay, he tellt her aboot me, an' hoo I had gane and droont mysel'. I could hear 'maist ilka word 'at he said; for ye see the flurin' here 's no verra soon', and I was jist 'at I cudna help hearkenin'. My lord's aff the nicht, as I tell ye. It's a queer gait, but a quaiet, he thinks, nae doobt. Gin onybody wad but tell her hoo mony een the baron's made sair wi' greitin'!'

'But hoo's that to be dune?' said Robert.

'I dinna ken. But I hae been watchin' to see you ever sin' syne. I hae seen ye gang by mony a time. Ye're the only man I ken 'at I could speyk till aboot it. Ye maun think what ye can do. The warst o' 't is I canna tell wha she is or whaur she bides.'

'In that case, I canna see what's to be dune.'

'Cudna ye watch them aboord, an' slip a letter intil her han'? Or ye cud gie 't to the skipper to gie her.'

'I ken the skipper weel eneuch. He's a respectable man. Gin he kent what the baron was efter, he wadna tak him on boord.'

'That wad do little guid. He wad only hae her aff some ither gait.'

'Weel,' said Robert, rising, 'I'll awa' hame, an' think aboot it as I gang.--Wad ye tak a feow shillin's frae an auld frien'?' he added with hesitation, putting his hand in his pocket.

'Na--no a baubee,' she answered. 'Nobody sall say it was for mysel' I broucht ye here. Come efter me, an' min' whaur ye pit doon yer feet. It's no sicker.'

She led him to the door. He bade her good-night.

'Tak care ye dinna fa' gaein' doon the stair. It's maist as steep 's a wa'.'

As Robert came from between the houses, he caught a glimpse of a man in a groom's dress going in at the street door of that he had left.

All the natural knighthood in him was roused. But what could he do? To write was a sneaking way. He would confront the baron. The baron and the girl would both laugh at him. The sole conclusion he could arrive at was to consult Shargar.

He lost no time in telling him the story.

'I tauld ye he was up to some deevilry or ither,' said Shargar. 'I can shaw ye the verra hoose he maun be gaein' to tak her frae.'

'Ye vratch! what for didna ye tell me that afore?'

'Ye wadna hear aboot ither fowk's affairs. Na, not you! But some fowk has no richt to consideration. The verra stanes they say 'ill cry oot ill secrets like brither Sandy's.'

'Whase hoose is 't?'

'I dinna ken. I only saw him come oot o' 't ance, an' Jock Mitchell was haudin' Black Geordie roon' the neuk. It canna be far frae Mr. Lindsay's 'at you an' Mr. Ericson used to gang till.'

'Come an' lat me see 't direckly,' cried Robert, starting up, with a terrible foreboding at his heart.

They were in the street in a moment. Shargar led the way by a country lane to the top of the hill on the right, and then turning to the left, brought him to some houses standing well apart from each other. It was a region unknown to Robert. They were the backs of the houses of which Mr. Lindsay's was one.

'This is the hoose,' said Shargar.

Robert rushed into action. He knocked at the door. Mr. Lindsay's Jenny opened it.

'Is yer mistress in, Jenny?' he asked at once.

'Na. Ay. The maister's gane to Bors Castle.'

'It's Miss Lindsay I want to see.'

'She's up in her ain room wi' a sair heid.'

Robert looked her hard in the face, and knew she was lying.

'I want to see her verra partic'lar,' he said.

'Weel, ye canna see her,' returned Jenny angrily. 'I'll tell her onything ye like.'

Concluding that little was to be gained by longer parley, but quite uncertain whether Mysie was in the house or not, Robert turned to Shargar, took him by the arm, and walked away in silence. When they were beyond earshot of Jenny, who stood looking after them,

'Ye're sure that's the hoose, Shargar?' said Robert quietly.

'As sure's deith, and maybe surer, for I saw him come oot wi' my ain een.'

'Weel, Shargar, it's grown something awfu' noo. It's Miss Lindsay. Was there iver sic a villain as that Lord Rothie--that brither o' yours!'

'I disoun 'im frae this verra 'oor,' said Shargar solemnly.

'Something maun be dune. We'll awa' to the quay, an' see what'll turn up. I wonner hoo's the tide.'

'The tide's risin'. They'll never try to win oot till it's slack watter--furbye 'at the Amphitrite, for as braid 's she is, and her bows modelled efter the cheeks o' a resurrection cherub upo' a gravestane, draws a heap o' watter: an' the bar they say 's waur to win ower nor usual: it's been gatherin' again.'

As they spoke, the boys were making for the new town, eagerly. Just opposite where the Amphitrite lay was a public-house: into that they made up their minds to go, and there to write a letter, which they would give to Miss Lindsay if they could, or, if not, leave with Skipper Hoornbeek. Before they reached the river, a thick rain of minute drops began to fall, rendering the night still darker, so that they could scarcely see the vessels from the pavement on the other side of the quay, along which they were hurrying, to avoid the cables, rings, and stone posts that made its margin dangerous in the dim light. When they came to The Smack Inn they crossed right over to reach the Amphitrite. A growing fear kept them silent as they approached her berth. It was empty. They turned and stared at each other in dismay.

One of those amphibious animals that loiter about the borders of the water was seated on a stone smoking, probably fortified against the rain by the whisky inside him.

'Whaur's the Amphitrite, Alan?' asked Shargar, for Robert was dumb with disappointment and rage.

'Half doon to Stanehive by this time, I'm thinkin',' answered Alan. 'For a brewin' tub like her, she fummles awa nae ill wi' a licht win' astarn o' her. But I'm doobtin' afore she win across the herrin-pot her fine passengers 'll win at the boddom o' their stamacks. It's like to blaw a bonnetfu', and she rows awfu' in ony win'. I dinna think she cud capsize, but for wamlin' she's waur nor a bairn with the grips.'

In absolute helplessness, the boys had let him talk on: there was nothing more to be done; and Alan was in a talkative mood.

'Fegs! gin 't come on to blaw,' he resumed, 'I wadna wonner gin they got the skipper to set them ashore at Stanehive. I heard auld Horny say something aboot lyin' to there for a bit, to tak a keg or something aboord.'

The boys looked at each other, bade Alan good-night, and walked away.

'Hoo far is 't to Stonehaven, Shargar?' said Robert.

'I dinna richtly ken. Maybe frae twal to fifteen mile.'

Robert stood still. Shargar saw his face pale as death, and contorted with the effort to control his feelings.

'Shargar,' he said, 'what am I to do? I vowed to Mr. Ericson that, gin he deid, I wad luik efter that bonny lassie. An' noo whan he's lyin' a' but deid, I hae latten her slip throu' my fingers wi' clean carelessness. What am I to do? Gin I cud only win to Stonehaven afore the Amphitrite! I cud gang aboord wi' the keg, and gin I cud do naething mair, I wad hae tried to do my best. Gin I do naething, my hert 'll brak wi' the weicht o' my shame.'

Shargar burst into a roar of laughter. Robert was on the point of knocking him down, but took him by the throat as a milder proceeding, and shook him.

'Robert! Robert!' gurgled Shargar, as soon as his choking had overcome his merriment, 'ye're an awfu' Hielan'man. Hearken to me. I beg--g--g yer pardon. What I was thinkin' o' was--'

Robert relaxed his hold. But Shargar, notwithstanding the lesson Robert had given him, could hardly speak yet for the enjoyment of his own device.

'Gin we could only get rid o' Jock Mitchell!--' he crowed; and burst out again.

'He's wi' a wuman i' the Gallowgate,' said Robert.

'Losh, man!' exclaimed Shargar, and started off at full speed.

He was no match for his companion, however.

'Whaur the deevil are ye rinnin' till, ye wirrycow (scarecrow)?' panted Robert, as he laid hold of his collar.

'Lat me gang, Robert,' gasped Shargar. 'Losh, man! ye'll be on Black Geordie in anither ten meenits, an' me ahin' ye upo' Reid Rorie. An' faith gin we binna at Stanehive afore the Dutchman wi' 's boddom foremost, it'll be the faut o' the horse and no o' the men.'

Robert's heart gave a bound of hope.

'Hoo 'ill ye get them, Shargar?' he asked eagerly.

'Steal them,' answered Shargar, struggling to get away from the grasp still upon his collar.

'We micht be hanged for that.'

'Weel, Robert, I'll tak a' the wyte o' 't. Gin it hadna been for you, I micht ha' been hangt by this time for ill doin': for your sake I'll be hangt for weel doin', an' welcome. Come awa'. To steal a mairch upo' brither Sandy wi' aucht (eight) horse-huves o' 's ain! Ha! ha! ha!'

They sped along, now running themselves out of breath, now walking themselves into it again, until they reached a retired hostelry between the two towns. Warning Robert not to show himself, Shargar disappeared round the corner of the house.

Robert grew weary, and then anxious. At length Shargar's face came through the darkness.

'Robert,' he whispered, 'gie 's yer bonnet. I'll be wi' ye in a moment noo.'

Robert obeyed, too anxious to question him. In about three minutes more Shargar reappeared, leading what seemed the ghost of a black horse; for Robert could see only his eyes, and his hoofs made scarcely any noise. How he had managed it with a horse of Black Geordie's temper, I do not know, but some horses will let some persons do anything with them: he had drawn his own stockings over his fore feet, and tied their two caps upon his hind hoofs.

'Lead him awa' quaietly up the road till I come to ye,' said Shargar, as he took the mufflings off the horse's feet. 'An' min' 'at he doesna tak a nip o' ye. He's some ill for bitin'. I'll be efter ye direckly. Rorie's saiddlet an' bridled. He only wants his carpet-shune.'

Robert led the horse a few hundred yards, then stopped and waited. Shargar soon joined him, already mounted on Red Roderick.

'Here's yer bonnet, Robert. It's some foul, I doobt. But I cudna help it. Gang on, man. Up wi' ye. Maybe I wad hae better keepit Geordie mysel'. But ye can ride. Ance ye're on, he canna bite ye.'

But Robert needed no encouragement from Shargar. In his present mood he would have mounted a griffin. He was on horseback in a moment. They trotted gently through the streets, and out of the town. Once over the Dee, they gave their horses the rein, and off they went through the dark drizzle. Before they got half-way they were wet to the skin; but little did Robert, or Shargar either, care for that. Not many words passed between them.

'Hoo 'ill ye get the horse (plural) in again, Shargar?' asked Robert.

'Afore I get them back,' answered Shargar, 'they'll be tired eneuch to gang hame o' themsel's. Gin we had only had the luck to meet Jock!--that wad hae been gran'.'

'What for that?'

'I wad hae cawed Reid Rorie ower the heid o' 'm, an' left him lyin'--the coorse villain!'

The horses never flagged till they drew up in the main street of Stonehaven. Robert ran down to the harbour to make inquiry, and left Shargar to put them up.

The moon had risen, but the air was so full of vapour that she only succeeded in melting the darkness a little. The sea rolled in front, awful in its dreariness, under just light enough to show a something unlike the land. But the rain had ceased, and the air was clearer. Robert asked a solitary man, with a telescope in his hand, whether he was looking out for the Amphitrite. The man asked him gruffly in return what he knew of her. Possibly the nature of the keg to be put on board had something to do with his Scotch reply. Robert told him he was a friend of the captain, had missed the boat, and would give any one five shillings to put him on board. The man went away and returned with a companion. After some further questioning and bargaining, they agreed to take him. Robert loitered about the pier full of impatience. Shargar joined him.

Day began to break over the waves. They gleamed with a blue-gray leaden sheen. The men appeared coming along the harbour, and descended by a stair into a little skiff, where a barrel, or something like one, lay under a tarpaulin. Robert bade Shargar good-bye, and followed. They pushed off, rowed out into the bay, and lay on their oars waiting for the vessel. The light grew apace, and Robert fancied he could distinguish the two horses with one rider against the sky on the top of the cliffs, moving northwards. Turning his eyes to the sea, he saw the canvas of the brig, and his heart beat fast. The men bent to their oars. She drew nearer, and lay to. When they reached her he caught the rope the sailors threw, was on board in a moment, and went aft to the captain. The Dutchman stared. In a few words Robert made him understand his object, offering to pay for his passage, but the good man would not hear of it. He told him that the lady and gentleman had come on board as brother and sister: the baron was too knowing to run his head into the noose of Scotch law.

'I cannot throw him over the board,' said the skipper; 'and what am I to do? I am afraid it is of no use. Ah! poor thing!'

By this time the vessel was under way. The wind freshened. Mysie had been ill ever since they left the mouth of the river: now she was much worse. Before another hour passed, she was crying to be taken home to her papa. Still the wind increased, and the vessel laboured much.

Robert never felt better, and if it had not been for the cause of his sea-faring, would have thoroughly enjoyed it. He put on some sea-going clothes of the captain's, and set himself to take his share in working the brig, in which he was soon proficient enough to be useful. When the sun rose, they were in a tossing wilderness of waves. With the sunrise, Robert began to think he had been guilty of a great folly. For what could he do? How was he to prevent the girl from going off with her lover the moment they landed? But his poor attempt would verify his willingness.

The baron came on deck now and then, looking bored. He had not calculated on having to nurse the girl. Had Mysie been well, he could have amused himself with her, for he found her ignorance interesting. As it was, he felt injured, and indeed disgusted at the result of the experiment.

On the third day the wind abated a little; but towards night it blew hard again, and it was not until they reached the smooth waters of the Scheldt that Mysie made her appearance on deck, looking dreadfully ill, and altogether like a miserable, unhappy child. Her beauty was greatly gone, and Lord Rothie did not pay her much attention.

Robert had as yet made no attempt to communicate with her, for there was scarcely a chance of her concealing a letter from the baron. But as soon as they were in smooth water, he wrote one, telling her in the simplest language that the baron was a bad man, who had amused himself by making many women fall in love with him, and then leaving them miserable: he knew one of them himself.

Having finished his letter, he began to look abroad over the smooth water, and the land smooth as the water. He saw tall poplars, the spires of the forest, and rows of round-headed dumpy trees, like domes. And he saw that all the buildings like churches, had either spires like poplars, or low round domes like those other trees. The domes gave an eastern aspect to the country. The spire of Antwerp cathedral especially had the poplar for its model. The pinnacles which rose from the base of each successive start of its narrowing height were just the clinging, upright branches of the poplar--a lovely instance of Art following Nature's suggestion.

XXIII. ROBERT FINDS A NEW INSTRUMENT

At length the vessel lay alongside the quay, and as Mysie stepped from its side the skipper found an opportunity of giving her Robert's letter. It was the poorest of chances, but Robert could think of no other. She started on receiving it, but regarding the skipper's significant gestures put it quietly away. She looked anything but happy, for her illness had deprived her of courage, and probably roused her conscience. Robert followed the pair, saw them enter The Great Labourer--what could the name mean? could it mean The Good Shepherd?--and turned away helpless, objectless indeed, for he had done all that he could, and that all was of no potency. A world of innocence and beauty was about to be hurled from its orbit of light into the blackness of outer chaos; he knew it, and was unable to speak word or do deed that should frustrate the power of a devil who so loved himself that he counted it an honour to a girl to have him for her ruin. Her after life had no significance for him, save as a trophy of his victory. He never perceived that such victory was not yielded to him; that he gained it by putting on the garments of light; that if his inward form had appeared in its own ugliness, not one of the women whose admiration he had secured would not have turned from him as from the monster of an old tale.

Robert wandered about till he was so weary that his head ached with weariness. At length he came upon the open space before the cathedral, whence the poplar-spire rose aloft into a blue sky flecked with white clouds. It was near sunset, and he could not see the sun, but the upper half of the spire shone glorious in its radiance. From the top his eye sank to the base. In the base was a little door half open. Might not that be the lowly narrow entrance through the shadow up to the sun-filled air? He drew near with a kind of tremor, for never before had he gazed upon visible grandeur growing out of the human soul, in the majesty of everlastingness--a tree of the Lord's planting. Where had been but an empty space of air and light and darkness, had risen, and had stood for ages, a mighty wonder awful to the eye, solid to the hand. He peeped through the opening of the door: there was the foot of a stair--marvellous as the ladder of Jacob's dream--turning away towards the unknown. He pushed the door and entered. A man appeared and barred his advance. Robert put his hand in his pocket and drew out some silver. The man took one piece--looked at it--turned it over--put it in his pocket, and led the way up the stair. Robert followed and followed and followed.

He came out of stone walls upon an airy platform whence the spire ascended heavenwards. His conductor led upward still, and he followed, winding within a spiral network of stone, through which all the world looked in. Another platform, and yet another spire springing from its basement. Still up they went, and at length stood on a circle of stone surrounding like a coronet the last base of the spire which lifted its apex untrodden. Then Robert turned and looked below. He grasped the stones before him. The loneliness was awful.

There was nothing between him and the roofs of the houses, four hundred feet below, but the spot where he stood. The whole city, with its red roofs, lay under him. He stood uplifted on the genius of the builder, and the town beneath him was a toy. The all but featureless flat spread forty miles on every side, and the roofs of the largest buildings below were as dovecots. But the space between was alive with awe--so vast, so real!

He turned and descended, winding through the network of stone which was all between him and space. The object of the architect must have been to melt away the material from before the eyes of the spirit. He hung in the air in a cloud of stone. As he came in his descent within the ornaments of one of the basements, he found himself looking through two thicknesses of stone lace on the nearing city. Down there was the beast of prey and his victim; but for the moment he was above the region of sorrow. His weariness and his headache had vanished utterly. With his mind tossed on its own speechless delight, he was slowly descending still, when he saw on his left hand a door ajar. He would look what mystery lay within. A push opened it. He discovered only a little chamber lined with wood. In the centre stood something--a bench-like piece of furniture, plain and worn. He advanced a step; peered over the top of it; saw keys, white and black; saw pedals below: it was an organ! Two strides brought him in front of it. A wooden stool, polished and hollowed with centuries of use, was before it. But where was the bellows? That might be down hundreds of steps below, for he was half-way only to the ground. He seated himself musingly, and struck, as he thought, a dumb chord. Responded, up in the air, far overhead, a mighty booming clang. Startled, almost frightened, even as if Mary St. John had said she loved him, Robert sprung from the stool, and, without knowing why, moved only by the chastity of delight, flung the door to the post. It banged and clicked. Almost mad with the joy of the titanic instrument, he seated himself again at the keys, and plunged into a tempest of clanging harmony. One hundred bells hang in that tower of wonder, an instrument for a city, nay, for a kingdom. Often had Robert dreamed that he was the galvanic centre of a thunder-cloud of harmony, flashing off from every finger the willed lightning tone: such was the unexpected scale of this instrument--so far aloft in the sunny air rang the responsive notes, that his dream appeared almost realized. The music, like a fountain bursting upwards, drew him up and bore him aloft. From the resounding cone of bells overhead he no longer heard their tones proceed, but saw level-winged forms of light speeding off with a message to the nations. It was only his roused phantasy; but a sweet tone is nevertheless a messenger of God; and a right harmony and sequence of such tones is a little gospel.

At length he found himself following, till that moment unconsciously, the chain of tunes he well remembered having played on his violin the night he went first with Ericson to see Mysie, ending with his strange chant about the witch lady and the dead man's hand.

Ere he had finished the last, his passion had begun to fold its wings, and he grew dimly aware of a beating at the door of the solitary chamber in which he sat. He knew nothing of the enormity of which he was guilty--presenting unsought the city of Antwerp with a glorious phantasia. He did not know that only upon grand, solemn, world-wide occasions, such as a king's birthday or a ball at the Hôtel de Ville, was such music on the card. When he flung the door to, it had closed with a spring lock, and for the last quarter of an hour three gens-d'arme, commanded by the sacristan of the tower, had been thundering thereat. He waited only to finish the last notes of the wild Orcadian chant, and opened the door. He was seized by the collar, dragged down the stair into the street, and through a crowd of wondering faces--poor unconscious dreamer! it will not do to think on the house-top even, and you had been dreaming very loud indeed in the church spire--away to the bureau of the police.

XXIV. DEATH

I need not recount the proceedings of the Belgian police; how they interrogated Robert concerning a letter from Mary St. John which they found in an inner pocket; how they looked doubtful over a copy of Horace that lay in his coat, and put evidently a momentous question about some algebraical calculations on the fly-leaf of it. Fortunately or unfortunately--I do not know which--Robert did not understand a word they said to him. He was locked up, and left to fret for nearly a week; though what he could have done had he been at liberty, he knew as little as I know. At last, long after it was useless to make any inquiry about Miss Lindsay, he was set at liberty. He could just pay for a steerage passage to London, whence he wrote to Dr. Anderson for a supply, and was in Aberdeen a few days after.

This was Robert's first cosmopolitan experience. He confided the whole affair to the doctor, who approved of all, saying it could have been of no use, but he had done right. He advised him to go home at once, for he had had letters inquiring after him. Ericson was growing steadily worse--in fact, he feared Robert might not see him alive.

If this news struck Robert to the heart, his pain was yet not without some poor alleviation:--he need not tell Ericson about Mysie, but might leave him to find out the truth when, free of a dying body, he would be better able to bear it. That very night he set off on foot for Rothieden. There was no coach from Aberdeen till eight the following morning, and before that he would be there.

It was a dreary journey without Ericson. Every turn of the road reminded him of him. And Ericson too was going a lonely unknown way.

Did ever two go together upon that way? Might not two die together and not lose hold of each other all the time, even when the sense of the clasping hands was gone, and the soul had withdrawn itself from the touch? Happy they who prefer the will of God to their own even in this, and would, as the best friend, have him near who can be near--him who made the fourth in the fiery furnace! Fable or fact, reader, I do not care. The One I mean is, and in him I hope.

Very weary was Robert when he walked into his grandmother's house.

Betty came out of the kitchen at the sound of his entrance.

'Is Mr. Ericson--?'

'Na; he's nae deid,' she answered. 'He'll maybe live a day or twa, they say.'

'Thank God!' said Robert, and went to his grandmother.

'Eh, laddie!' said Mrs. Falconer, the first greetings over, 'ane 's ta'en an' anither 's left! but what for 's mair nor I can faddom. There's that fine young man, Maister Ericson, at deith's door; an' here am I, an auld runklet wife, left to cry upo' deith, an' he winna hear me.'

'Cry upo' God, grannie, an' no upo' deith,' said Robert, catching at the word as his grandmother herself might have done. He had no such unfair habit when I knew him, and always spoke to one's meaning, not one's words. But then he had a wonderful gift of knowing what one's meaning was.

He did not sit down, but, tired as he was, went straight to The Boar's Head. He met no one in the archway, and walked up to Ericson's room. When he opened the door, he found the large screen on the other side, and hearing a painful cough, lingered behind it, for he could not control his feelings sufficiently. Then he heard a voice--Ericson's voice; but oh, how changed!--He had no idea that he ought not to listen.

'Mary,' the voice said, 'do not look like that. I am not suffering. It is only my body. Your arm round me makes me so strong! Let me lay my head on your shoulder.'

A brief pause followed.

'But, Eric,' said Mary's voice, 'there is one that loves you better than I do.'

'If there is,' returned Ericson, feebly, 'he has sent his angel to deliver me.'

'But you do believe in him, Eric?'

The voice expressed anxiety no less than love.

'I am going to see. There is no other way. When I find him, I shall believe in him. I shall love him with all my heart, I know. I love the thought of him now.'

'But that's not himself, my--darling!' she said.

'No. But I cannot love himself till I find him. Perhaps there is no Jesus.'

'Oh, don't say that. I can't bear to hear you talk so,'

'But, dear heart, if you're so sure of him, do you think he would turn me away because I don't do what I can't do? I would if I could with all my heart. If I were to say I believed in him, and then didn't trust him, I could understand it. But when it's only that I'm not sure about what I never saw, or had enough of proof to satisfy me of, how can he be vexed at that? You seem to me to do him great wrong, Mary. Would you now banish me for ever, if I should, when my brain is wrapped in the clouds of death, forget you along with everything else for a moment?'

'No, no, no. Don't talk like that, Eric, dear. There may be reasons, you know.'

'I know what they say well enough. But I expect Him, if there is a Him, to be better even than you, my beautiful--and I don't know a fault in you, but that you believe in a God you can't trust. If I believed in a God, wouldn't I trust him just? And I do hope in him. We'll see, my darling. When we meet again I think you'll say I was right.'

Robert stood like one turned into marble. Deep called unto deep in his soul. The waves and the billows went over him.

Mary St. John answered not a word. I think she must have been conscience-stricken. Surely the Son of Man saw nearly as much faith in Ericson as in her. Only she clung to the word as a bond that the Lord had given her: she would rather have his bond.

Ericson had another fit of coughing. Robert heard the rustling of ministration. But in a moment the dying man again took up the word. He seemed almost as anxious about Mary's faith as she was about his.

'There's Robert,' he said: 'I do believe that boy would die for me, and I never did anything to deserve it. Now Jesus Christ must be as good as Robert at least. I think he must be a great deal better, if he's Jesus Christ at all. Now Robert might be hurt if I didn't believe in him. But I've never seen Jesus Christ. It's all in an old book, over which the people that say they believe in it the most, fight like dogs and cats. I beg your pardon, my Mary; but they do, though the words are ugly.'

'Ah! but if you had tried it as I've tried it, you would know better, Eric.'

'I think I should, dear. But it's too late now. I must just go and see. There's no other way left.'

The terrible cough came again. As soon as the fit was over, with a grand despair in his heart, Robert went from behind the screen.

Ericson was on a couch. His head lay on Mary St. John's bosom. Neither saw him.

'Perhaps,' said Ericson, panting with death, 'a kiss in heaven may be as good as being married on earth, Mary.'

She saw Robert and did not answer. Then Eric saw him. He smiled; but Mary grew very pale.

Robert came forward, stooped and kissed Ericson's forehead, kneeled and kissed Mary's hand, rose and went out.

From that moment they were both dead to him. Dead, I say--not lost, not estranged, but dead--that is, awful and holy. He wept for Eric. He did not weep for Mary yet. But he found a time.

Ericson died two days after.

Here endeth Robert's youth.

XXV. IN MEMORIAM

In memory of Eric Ericson, I add a chapter of sonnets gathered from his papers, almost desiring that those only should read them who turn to the book a second time. How his papers came into my possession, will be explained afterwards.

Tumultuous rushing o'er the outstretched plains; A wildered maze of comets and of suns; The blood of changeless God that ever runs With quick diastole up the immortal veins; A phantom host that moves and works in chains; A monstrous fiction which, collapsing, stuns The mind to stupor and amaze at once; A tragedy which that man best explains Who rushes blindly on his wild career With trampling hoofs and sound of mailed war, Who will not nurse a life to win a tear, But is extinguished like a falling star:-- Such will at times this life appear to me, Until I learn to read more perfectly.

HOM. IL. v. 403.

If thou art tempted by a thought of ill, Crave not too soon for victory, nor deem Thou art a coward if thy safety seem To spring too little from a righteous will: For there is nightmare on thee, nor until Thy soul hath caught the morning's early gleam Seek thou to analyze the monstrous dream By painful introversion; rather fill Thine eye with forms thou knowest to be truth: But see thou cherish higher hope than this; A hope hereafter that thou shalt be fit Calm-eyed to face distortion, and to sit Transparent among other forms of youth Who own no impulse save to God and bliss.

And must I ever wake, gray dawn, to know Thee standing sadly by me like a ghost? I am perplexed with thee, that thou shouldst cost This Earth another turning: all aglow Thou shouldst have reached me, with a purple show Along far-mountain tops: and I would post Over the breadth of seas though I were lost In the hot phantom-chase for life, if so Thou camest ever with this numbing sense Of chilly distance and unlovely light; Waking this gnawing soul anew to fight With its perpetual load: I drive thee hence-- I have another mountain-range from whence Bursteh a sun unutterably bright.

GALILEO.

'And yet it moves!' Ah, Truth, where wert thou then, When all for thee they racked each piteous limb? Wert though in Heaven, and busy with thy hymn, When those poor hands convulsed that held thy pen? Art thou a phantom that deceivest men To their undoing? or dost thou watch him Pale, cold, and silent in his dungeon dim? And wilt thou ever speak to him again? 'It moves, it moves! Alas, my flesh was weak; That was a hideous dream! I'll cry aloud How the green bulk wheels sunward day by day! Ah me! ah me! perchance my heart was proud That I alone should know that word to speak; And now, sweet Truth, shine upon these, I pray.'

If thou wouldst live the Truth in very deed, Thou hast thy joy, but thou hast more of pain. Others will live in peace, and thou be fain To bargain with despair, and in thy need To make thy meal upon the scantiest weed. These palaces, for thee they stand in vain; Thine is a ruinous hut; and oft the rain Shall drench thee in the midnight; yea the speed Of earth outstrip thee pilgrim, while thy feet Move slowly up the heights. Yet will there come Through the time-rents about thy moving cell, An arrow for despair, and oft the hum Of far-off populous realms where spirits dwell.

TO * * * *

Speak, Prophet of the Lord! We may not start To find thee with us in thine ancient dress, Haggard and pale from some bleak wilderness, Empty of all save God and thy loud heart: Nor with like rugged message quick to dart Into the hideous fiction mean and base: But yet, O prophet man, we need not less, But more of earnest; though it is thy part To deal in other words, if thou wouldst smite The living Mammon, seated, not as then In bestial quiescence grimly dight, But thrice as much an idol-god as when He stared at his own feet from morn to night. [8]

THE WATCHER.

From out a windy cleft there comes a gaze Of eyes unearthly which go to and fro Upon the people's tumult, for below The nations smite each other: no amaze Troubles their liquid rolling, or affrays Their deep-set contemplation: steadily glow Those ever holier eye-balls, for they grow Liker unto the eyes of one that prays. And if those clasped hands tremble, comes a power As of the might of worlds, and they are holden Blessing above us in the sunrise golden; And they will be uplifted till that hour Of terrible rolling which shall rise and shake This conscious nightmare from us and we wake.

THE BELOVED DISCIPLE.

I

One do I see and twelve; but second there Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one; Not from thy nobler port, for there are none More quiet-featured; some there are who bear Their message on their brows, while others wear A look of large commission, nor will shun The fiery trial, so their work is done: But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer-- Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips Seem like the porches of the spirit land; For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by, Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye Burns with a vision and apocalypse Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand.

II

A Boanerges too! Upon my heart It lay a heavy hour: features like thine Should glow with other message than the shine Of the earth-burrowing levin, and the start That cleaveth horrid gulfs. Awful and swart A moment stoodest thou, but less divine-- Brawny and clad in ruin!--till with mine Thy heart made answering signals, and apart Beamed forth thy two rapt eye-balls doubly clear, And twice as strong because thou didst thy duty, And though affianced to immortal Beauty, Hiddest not weakly underneath her veil The pest of Sin and Death which maketh pale: Henceforward be thy spirit doubly dear. [9]

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.

There is not any weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are, We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour. And I when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God? Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him Who once beside our deepest woe did bud A patient watching flower about the brim.

'Tis not the violent hands alone that bring The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom Although to these full oft the yawning tomb Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting, A more immortal agony, will cling To the half-fashioned sin which would assume Fair Virtue's garb. The eye that sows the gloom With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring What time the sun of passion burning fierce Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance; The bitter word, and the unkindly glance, The crust and canker coming with the years, Are liker Death than arrows, and the lance Which through the living heart at once doth pierce.

SPOKEN OF SEVERAL PHILOSOPHERS.

I pray you, all ye men, who put your trust In moulds and systems and well-tackled gear, Holding that Nature lives from year to year In one continual round because she must-- Set me not down, I pray you, in the dust Of all these centuries, like a pot of beer, A pewter-pot disconsolately clear, Which holds a potful, as is right and just. I will grow clamorous--by the rood, I will, If thus ye use me like a pewter pot. Good friend, thou art a toper and a sot-- I will not be the lead to hold thy swill, Nor any lead: I will arise and spill Thy silly beverage, spill it piping hot.

Nature, to him no message dost thou bear, Who in thy beauty findeth not the power To gird himself more strongly for the hour Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear To him who knows thy secret, and in shower And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower Where he may rest until the heavens are fair! Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance Of onward movement steady and serene, Where oft in struggle and in contest keen His eyes will opened be, and all the dance Of life break on him, and a wide expanse Roll upward through the void, sunny and green.

TO JUNE.

Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see! For in a season of such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful whether Thou shouldst be seen in such a company Of ugly runaways, unshapely heaps Of ruffian vapour, broken from restraint Of their slim prison in the ocean deeps. But yet I may not, chide: fall to thy books, Fall to immediately without complaint-- There they are lying, hills and vales and brooks.

WRITTEN ABOUT THE LONGEST DAY.

Summer, sweet Summer, many-fingered Summer! We hold thee very dear, as well we may: It is the kernel of the year to-day-- All hail to thee! Thou art a welcome corner! If every insect were a fairy drummer, And I a fifer that could deftly play, We'd give the old Earth such a roundelay That she would cast all thought of labour from her Ah! what is this upon my window-pane? Some sulky drooping cloud comes pouting up, Stamping its glittering feet along the plain! Well, I will let that idle fancy drop. Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain! And all the earth shines like a silver cup!

ON A MIDGE.

Whence do ye come, ye creature? Each of you Is perfect as an angel; wings and eyes Stupendous in their beauty--gorgeous dyes In feathery fields of purple and of blue! Would God I saw a moment as ye do! I would become a molecule in size, Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly, Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs, Hides in its little breast eternally From you, ye prickly grim philosophers, With all your theories that sound so high: Hark to the buzz a moment, my good sirs!

ON A WATERFALL.

Here stands a giant stone from whose far top Comes down the sounding water. Let me gaze Till every sense of man and human ways Is wrecked and quenched for ever, and I drop Into the whirl of time, and without stop Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze My strength returns when I behold thy prop Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack Surely thy strength is human, and like me Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back! And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black-- A breezy tuft of grass which I can see Waving serenely from a sunlit crack!

Above my head the great pine-branches tower Backwards and forwards each to the other bends, Beckoning the tempest-cloud which hither wends Like a slow-laboured thought, heavy with power; Hark to the patter of the coming shower! Let me be silent while the Almighty sends His thunder-word along; but when it ends I will arise and fashion from the hour Words of stupendous import, fit to guard High thoughts and purposes, which I may wave, When the temptation cometh close and hard, Like fiery brands betwixt me and the grave Of meaner things--to which I am a slave If evermore I keep not watch and ward.

I do remember how when very young, I saw the great sea first, and heard its swell As I drew nearer, caught within the spell Of its vast size and its mysterious tongue. How the floor trembled, and the dark boat swung With a man in it, and a great wave fell Within a stone's cast! Words may never tell The passion of the moment, when I flung All childish records by, and felt arise A thing that died no more! An awful power I claimed with trembling hands and eager eyes, Mine, mine for ever, an immortal dower.-- The noise of waters soundeth to this hour, When I look seaward through the quiet skies.

ON THE SOURCE OF THE ARVE.

Hear'st thou the dash of water loud and hoarse With its perpetual tidings upward climb, Struggling against the wind? Oh, how sublime! For not in vain from its portentous source, Thy heart, wild stream, hath yearned for its full force, But from thine ice-toothed caverns dark as time At last thou issuest, dancing to the rhyme Of thy outvolleying freedom! Lo, thy course Lies straight before thee as the arrow flies, Right to the ocean-plains. Away, away! Thy parent waits thee, and her sunset dyes Are ruffled for thy coming, and the gray Of all her glittering borders flashes high Against the glittering rocks: oh, haste, and fly!

I. IN THE DESERT

A life lay behind Robert Falconer, and a life lay before him. He stood on a shoal between.

The life behind him was in its grave. He had covered it over and turned away. But he knew it would rise at night.

The life before him was not yet born; and what should issue from that dull ghastly unrevealing fog on the horizon, he did not care. Thither the tide setting eastward would carry him, and his future must be born. All he cared about was to leave the empty garments of his dead behind him--the sky and the fields, the houses and the gardens which those dead had made alive with their presence. Travel, motion, ever on, ever away, was the sole impulse in his heart. Nor had the thought of finding his father any share in his restlessness.

He told his grandmother that he was going back to Aberdeen. She looked in his face with surprise, but seeing trouble there, asked no questions. As if walking in a dream, he found himself at Dr. Anderson's door.

'Why, Robert,' said the good man, 'what has brought you back? Ah! I see. Poor Ericson! I am very sorry, my boy. What can I do for you?'

'I can't go on with my studies now, sir,' answered Robert. 'I have taken a great longing for travel. Will you give me a little money and let me go?'

'To be sure I will. Where do you want to go?'

'I don't know. Perhaps as I go I shall find myself wanting to go somewhere. You're not afraid to trust me, are you, sir?'

'Not in the least, Robert. I trust you perfectly. You shall do just as you please.--Have you any idea, how much money you will want?'

'No. Give me what you are willing I should spend: I will go by that.'

'Come along to the bank then. I will give you enough to start with. Write at once when you want more. Don't be too saving. Enjoy yourself as well as you can. I shall not grudge it.'

Robert smiled a wan smile at the idea of enjoying himself. His friend saw it, but let it pass. There was no good in persuading a man whose grief was all he had left, that he must ere long part with that too. That would have been in lowest deeps of sorrow to open a yet lower deep of horror. But Robert would have refused, and would have been right in refusing to believe with regard to himself what might be true in regard to most men. He might rise above his grief; he might learn to contain his grief; but lose it, forget it?--never.

He went to bid Shargar farewell. As soon as he had a glimpse of what his friend meant, he burst out in an agony of supplication.

'Tak me wi' ye, Robert,' he cried. 'Ye're a gentleman noo. I'll be yer man. I'll put on a livery coat, an' gang wi' ye. I'll awa' to Dr. Anderson. He's sure to lat me gang.'

'No, Shargar,' said Robert, 'I can't have you with me. I've come into trouble, Shargar, and I must fight it out alone.'

'Ay, ay; I ken. Puir Mr. Ericson!'

'There's nothing the matter with Mr. Ericson. Don't ask me any questions. I've said more to you now than I've said to anybody besides.'

'That is guid o' you, Robert. But am I never to see ye again?'

'I don't know. Perhaps we may meet some day.'

'Perhaps is nae muckle to say, Robert,' protested Shargar.

'It's more than can be said about everything, Shargar,' returned Robert, sadly.

'Weel, I maun jist tak it as 't comes,' said Shargar, with a despairing philosophy derived from the days when his mother thrashed him. 'But, eh! Robert, gin it had only pleased the Almichty to sen' me into the warl' in a some respectable kin' o' a fashion!'

'Wi' a chance a' gaein' aboot the country like that curst villain yer brither, I suppose?' retorted Robert, rousing himself for a moment.

'Na, na,' responded Shargar. 'I'll stick to my ain mither. She never learned me sic tricks.'

'Do ye that. Ye canna compleen o' God. It's a' richt as far 's ye're concerned. Gin he dinna something o' ye yet, it'll be your wyte, no his, I'm thinkin'.'

They walked to Dr. Anderson's together, and spent the night there. In the morning Robert got on the coach for Edinburgh.

I cannot, if I would, follow him on his travels. Only at times, when the conversation rose in the dead of night, by some Jacob's ladder of blessed ascent, into regions where the heart of such a man could open as in its own natural clime, would a few words cause the clouds that enveloped this period of his history to dispart, and grant me a peep into the phantasm of his past. I suspect, however, that much of it left upon his mind no recallable impressions. I suspect that much of it looked to himself in the retrospect like a painful dream, with only certain objects and occurrences standing prominent enough to clear the moonlight mist enwrapping the rest.

What the precise nature of his misery was I shall not even attempt to conjecture. That would be to intrude within the holy place of a human heart. One thing alone I will venture to affirm--that bitterness against either of his friends, whose spirits rushed together and left his outside, had no place in that noble nature. His fate lay behind him, like the birth of Shargar, like the death of Ericson, a decree.

I do not even know in what direction he first went. That he had seen many cities and many countries was apparent from glimpses of ancient streets, of mountain-marvels, of strange constellations, of things in heaven and earth which no one could have seen but himself, called up by the magic of his words. A silent man in company, he talked much when his hour of speech arrived. Seldom, however, did he narrate any incident save in connection with some truth of human nature, or fact of the universe.

I do know that the first thing he always did on reaching any new place was to visit the church with the loftiest spire; but he never looked into the church itself until he had left the earth behind him as far as that church would afford him the possibility of ascent. Breathing the air of its highest region, he found himself vaguely strengthened, yes comforted. One peculiar feeling he had, into which I could enter only upon happy occasion, of the presence of God in the wind. He said the wind up there on the heights of human aspiration always made him long and pray. Asking him one day something about his going to church so seldom, he answered thus:

'My dear boy, it does me ten times more good to get outside the spire than to go inside the church. The spire is the most essential, and consequently the most neglected part of the building. It symbolizes the aspiration without which no man's faith can hold its own. But the effort of too many of her priests goes to conceal from the worshippers the fact that there is such a stair, with a door to it out of the church. It looks as if they feared their people would desert them for heaven. But I presume it arises generally from the fact that they know of such an ascent themselves, only by hearsay. The knowledge of God is good, but the church is better!'

'Could it be,' I ventured to suggest, 'that, in order to ascend, they must put off the priests' garments?'

'Good, my boy!' he answered. 'All are priests up there, and must be clothed in fine linen, clean and white--the righteousness of saints--not the imputed righteousness of another,--that is a lying doctrine--but their own righteousness which God has wrought in them by Christ.' I never knew a man in whom the inward was so constantly clothed upon by the outward, whose ordinary habits were so symbolic of his spiritual tastes, or whose enjoyment of the sight of his eyes and the hearing of his ears was so much informed by his highest feelings. He regarded all human affairs from the heights of religion, as from their church-spires he looked down on the red roofs of Antwerp, on the black roofs of Cologne, on the gray roofs of Strasburg, or on the brown roofs of Basel--uplifted for the time above them, not in dissociation from them.

On the base of the missing twin-spire at Strasburg, high over the roof of the church, stands a little cottage--how strange its white muslin window-curtains look up there! To the day of his death he cherished the fancy of writing a book in that cottage, with the grand city to which London looks a modern mushroom, its thousand roofs with row upon row of windows in them--often five garret stories, one above the other, and its thickets of multiform chimneys, the thrones and procreant cradles of the storks, marvellous in history, habit, and dignity--all below him.

He was taken ill at Valence and lay there for a fortnight, oppressed with some kind of low fever. One night he awoke from a refreshing sleep, but could not sleep again. It seemed to him afterwards as if he had lain waiting for something. Anyhow something came. As it were a faint musical rain had invaded his hearing; but the night was clear, for the moon was shining on his window-blind. The sound came nearer, and revealed itself a delicate tinkling of bells. It drew nearer still and nearer, growing in sweet fulness as it came, till at length a slow torrent of tinklings went past his window in the street below. It was the flow of a thousand little currents of sound, a gliding of silvery threads, like the talking of water-ripples against the side of a barge in a slow canal--all as soft as the moonlight, as exquisite as an odour, each sound tenderly truncated and dull. A great multitude of sheep was shifting its quarters in the night, whence and whither and why he never knew. To his heart they were the messengers of the Most High. For into that heart, soothed and attuned by their thin harmony, not on the wind that floated without breaking their lovely message, but on the ripples of the wind that bloweth where it listeth, came the words, unlooked for, their coming unheralded by any mental premonition, 'My peace I give unto you.' The sounds died slowly away in the distance, fainting out of the air, even as they had grown upon it, but the words remained.

In a few moments he was fast asleep, comforted by pleasure into repose; his dreams were of gentle self-consoling griefs; and when he awoke in the morning--'My peace I give unto you,' was the first thought of which he was conscious. It may be that the sound of the sheep-bells made him think of the shepherds that watched their flocks by night, and they of the multitude of the heavenly host, and they of the song--'On earth peace': I do not know. The important point is not how the words came, but that the words remained--remained until he understood them, and they became to him spirit and life.

He soon recovered strength sufficiently to set out again upon his travels, great part of which he performed on foot. In this way he reached Avignon. Passing from one of its narrow streets into an open place in the midst, all at once he beheld, towering above him, on a height that overlooked the whole city and surrounding country, a great crucifix. The form of the Lord of Life still hung in the face of heaven and earth. He bowed his head involuntarily. No matter that when he drew nearer the power of it vanished. The memory of it remained with its first impression, and it had a share in what followed.

He made his way eastward towards the Alps. As he walked one day about noon over a desolate heath-covered height, reminding him not a little of the country of his childhood, the silence seized upon him. In the midst of the silence arose the crucifix, and once more the words which had often returned upon him sounded in the ears of the inner hearing, 'My peace I give unto you.' They were words he had known from the earliest memorial time. He had heard them in infancy, in childhood, in boyhood, in youth: now first in manhood it flashed upon him that the Lord did really mean that the peace of his soul should be the peace of their souls; that the peace wherewith his own soul was quiet, the peace at the very heart of the universe, was henceforth theirs--open to them, to all the world, to enter and be still. He fell upon his knees, bowed down in the birth of a great hope, held up his hands towards heaven, and cried, 'Lord Christ, give me thy peace.'

He said no more, but rose, caught up his stick, and strode forward, thinking.

He had learned what the sentence meant; what that was of which it spoke he had not yet learned. The peace he had once sought, the peace that lay in the smiles and tenderness of a woman, had 'overcome him like a summer cloud,' and had passed away. There was surely a deeper, a wider, a grander peace for him than that, if indeed it was the same peace wherewith the king of men regarded his approaching end, that he had left as a heritage to his brothers. Suddenly he was aware that the earth had begun to live again. The hum of insects arose from the heath around him; the odour of its flowers entered his dulled sense; the wind kissed him on the forehead; the sky domed up over his head; and the clouds veiled the distant mountain tops like the smoke of incense ascending from the altars of the worshipping earth. All Nature began to minister to one who had begun to lift his head from the baptism of fire. He had thought that Nature could never more be anything to him; and she was waiting on him like a mother. The next moment he was offended with himself for receiving ministrations the reaction of whose loveliness might no longer gather around the form of Mary St. John. Every wavelet of scent, every toss of a flower's head in the breeze, came with a sting in its pleasure--for there was no woman to whom they belonged. Yet he could not shut them out, for God and not woman is the heart of the universe. Would the day ever come when the loveliness of Mary St. John, felt and acknowledged as never before, would be even to him a joy and a thanksgiving? If ever, then because God is the heart of all.

I do not think this mood, wherein all forms of beauty sped to his soul as to their own needful centre, could have lasted over many miles of his journey. But such delicate inward revelations are none the less precious that they are evanescent. Many feelings are simply too good to last--using the phrase not in the unbelieving sense in which it is generally used, expressing the conviction that God is a hard father, fond of disappointing his children, but to express the fact that intensity and endurance cannot yet coexist in the human economy. But the virtue of a mood depends by no means on its immediate presence. Like any other experience, it may be believed in, and, in the absence which leaves the mind free to contemplate it, work even more good than in its presence.

At length he came in sight of the Alpine regions. Far off, the heads of the great mountains rose into the upper countries of cloud, where the snows settled on their stony heads, and the torrents ran out from beneath the frozen mass to gladden the earth below with the faith of the lonely hills. The mighty creatures lay like grotesque animals of a far-off titanic time, whose dead bodies had been first withered into stone, then worn away by the storms, and covered with shrouds and palls of snow, till the outlines of their forms were gone, and only rough shapes remained like those just blocked out in the sculptor's marble, vaguely suggesting what the creatures had been, as the corpse under the sheet of death is like a man. He came amongst the valleys at their feet, with their blue-green waters hurrying seawards--from stony heights of air into the mass of 'the restless wavy plain'; with their sides of rock rising in gigantic terrace after terrace up to the heavens; with their scaling pines, erect and slight, cone-head aspiring above cone-head, ambitious to clothe the bare mass with green, till failing at length in their upward efforts, the savage rock shot away and beyond and above them, the white and blue glaciers clinging cold and cruel to their ragged sides, and the dead blank of whiteness covering their final despair. He drew near to the lower glaciers, to find their awful abysses tremulous with liquid blue, a blue tender and profound as if fed from the reservoir of some hidden sky intenser than ours; he rejoiced over the velvety fields dotted with the toy-like houses of the mountaineers; he sat for hours listening by the side of their streams; he grew weary, felt oppressed, longed for a wider outlook, and began to climb towards a mountain village of which he had heard from a traveller, to find solitude and freedom in an air as lofty as if he climbed twelve of his beloved cathedral spires piled up in continuous ascent.

After ascending for hours in zigzags through pine woods, where the only sound was of the little streams trotting down to the valley below, or the distant hush of some thin waterfall, he reached a level, and came out of the woods. The path now led along the edge of a precipice descending sheer to the uppermost terrace of the valley he had left. The valley was but a cleft in the mass of the mountain: a little way over sank its other wall, steep as a plumb-line could have made it, of solid rock. On his right lay green fields of clover and strange grasses. Ever and anon from the cleft steamed up great blinding clouds of mist, which now wandered about over the nations of rocks on the mountain side beyond the gulf, now wrapt himself in their bewildering folds. In one moment the whole creation had vanished, and there seemed scarce existence enough left for more than the following footstep; the next, a mighty mountain stood in front, crowned with blinding snow, an awful fact; the lovely heavens were over his head, and the green sod under his feet; the grasshoppers chirped about him, and the gorgeous butterflies flew. From regions far beyond came the bells of the kine and the goats. He reached a little inn, and there took up his quarters.

I am able to be a little minute in my description, because I have since visited the place myself. Great heights rise around it on all sides. It stands as between heaven and hell, suspended between peaks and gulfs. The wind must roar awfully there in the winter; but the mountains stand away with their avalanches, and all the summer long keep the cold off the grassy fields.

The same evening, he was already weary. The next morning it rained. It rained fiercely all day. He would leave the place on the morrow. In the evening it began to clear up. He walked out. The sun was setting. The snow-peaks were faintly tinged with rose, and the ragged masses of vapour that hung lazy and leaden-coloured about the sides of the abyss, were partially dyed a sulky orange red. Then all faded into gray. But as the sunlight vanished, a veil sank from the face of the moon, already half-way to the zenith, and she gathered courage and shone, till the mountain looked lovely as a ghost in the gleam of its snow and the glimmer of its glaciers. 'Ah!' thought Falconer, 'such a peace at last is all a man can look for--the repose of a spectral Elysium, a world where passion has died away, and only the dim ghost of its memory to disturb with a shadowy sorrow the helpless content of its undreaming years. The religion that can do but this much is not a very great or very divine thing. The human heart cannot invent a better it may be, but it can imagine grander results.'

He did not yet know what the religion was of which he spoke. As well might a man born stone-deaf estimate the power of sweet sounds, or he who knows not a square from a circle pronounce upon the study of mathematics.

The next morning rose brilliant--an ideal summer day. He would not go yet; he would spend one day more in the place. He opened his valise to get some lighter garments. His eye fell on a New Testament. Dr. Anderson had put it there. He had never opened it yet, and now he let it lie. Its time had not yet come. He went out.

Walking up the edge of the valley, he came upon a little stream whose talk he had heard for some hundred yards. It flowed through a grassy hollow, with steeply sloping sides. Water is the same all the world over; but there was more than water here to bring his childhood back to Falconer. For at the spot where the path led him down to the burn, a little crag stood out from the bank,--a gray stone like many he knew on the stream that watered the valley of Rothieden: on the top of the stone grew a little heather; and beside it, bending towards the water, was a silver birch. He sat down on the foot of the rock, shut in by the high grassy banks from the gaze of the awful mountains. The sole unrest was the run of the water beside him, and it sounded so homely, that he began to jabber Scotch to it. He forgot that this stream was born in the clouds, far up where that peak rose into the air behind him; he did not know that a couple of hundred yards from where he sat, it tumbled headlong into the valley below: with his country's birch-tree beside him, and the rock crowned with its tuft of heather over his head, the quiet as of a Sabbath afternoon fell upon him--that quiet which is the one altogether lovely thing in the Scotch Sabbath--and once more the words arose in his mind, 'My peace I give unto you.'

Now he fell a-thinking what this peace could be. And it came into his mind as he thought, that Jesus had spoken in another place about giving rest to those that came to him, while here he spoke about 'my peace.' Could this my mean a certain kind of peace that the Lord himself possessed? Perhaps it was in virtue of that peace, whatever it was, that he was the Prince of Peace. Whatever peace he had must be the highest and best peace--therefore the one peace for a man to seek, if indeed, as the words of the Lord seemed to imply, a man was capable of possessing it. He remembered the New Testament in his box, and, resolving to try whether he could not make something more out of it, went back to the inn quieter in heart than since he left his home. In the evening he returned to the brook, and fell to searching the story, seeking after the peace of Jesus.

He found that the whole passage stood thus:--

'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.'

He did not leave the place for six weeks. Every day he went to the burn, as he called it, with his New Testament; every day tried yet again to make out something more of what the Saviour meant. By the end of the month it had dawned upon him, he hardly knew how, that the peace of Jesus (although, of course, he could not know what it was like till he had it) must have been a peace that came from the doing of the will of his Father. From the account he gave of the discoveries he then made, I venture to represent them in the driest and most exact form that I can find they will admit of. When I use the word discoveries, I need hardly say that I use it with reference to Falconer and his previous knowledge. They were these:--that Jesus taught--

First,--That a man's business is to do the will of God:

Second,--That God takes upon himself the care of the man:

Third,--Therefore, that a man must never be afraid of anything; and so,

Fourth,--be left free to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself.

But one day, his thoughts having cleared themselves a little upon these points, a new set of questions arose with sudden inundation--comprised in these two:--

'How can I tell for certain that there ever was such a man? How am I to be sure that such as he says is the mind of the maker of these glaciers and butterflies?'

All this time he was in the wilderness as much as Moses at the back of Horeb, or St. Paul when he vanishes in Arabia: and he did nothing but read the four gospels and ponder over them. Therefore it is not surprising that he should have already become so familiar with the gospel story, that the moment these questions appeared, the following words should dart to the forefront of his consciousness to meet them:--

'If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.'

Here was a word of Jesus himself, announcing the one means of arriving at a conviction of the truth or falsehood of all that he said, namely, the doing of the will of God by the man who would arrive at such conviction.

The next question naturally was: What is this will of God of which Jesus speaks? Here he found himself in difficulty. The theology of his grandmother rushed in upon him, threatening to overwhelm him with demands as to feeling and inward action from which his soul turned with sickness and fainting. That they were repulsive to him, that they appeared unreal, and contradictory to the nature around him, was no proof that they were not of God. But on the other hand, that they demanded what seemed to him unjust,--that these demands were founded on what seemed to him untruth attributed to God, on ways of thinking and feeling which are certainly degrading in a man,--these were reasons of the very highest nature for refusing to act upon them so long as, from whatever defects it might be in himself, they bore to him this aspect. He saw that while they appeared to be such, even though it might turn out that he mistook them, to acknowledge them would be to wrong God. But this conclusion left him in no better position for practice than before.

When at length he did see what the will of God was, he wondered, so simple did it appear, that he had failed to discover it at once. Yet not less than a fortnight had he been brooding and pondering over the question, as he wandered up and down that burnside, or sat at the foot of the heather-crowned stone and the silver-barked birch, when the light began to dawn upon him. It was thus.

In trying to understand the words of Jesus by searching back, as it were, for such thoughts and feelings in him as would account for the words he spoke, the perception awoke that at least he could not have meant by the will of God any such theological utterances as those which troubled him. Next it grew plain that what he came to do, was just to lead his life. That he should do the work, such as recorded, and much besides, that the Father gave him to do--this was the will of God concerning him. With this perception arose the conviction that unto every man whom God had sent into the world, he had given a work to do in that world. He had to lead the life God meant him to lead. The will of God was to be found and done in the world. In seeking a true relation to the world, would he find his relation to God?

The time for action was come.

He rose up from the stone of his meditation, took his staff in his hand, and went down the mountain, not knowing whither he went. And these were some of his thoughts as he went:

'If it was the will of God who made me and her, my will shall not be set against his. I cannot be happy, but I will bow my head and let his waves and his billows go over me. If there is such a God, he knows what a pain I bear. His will be done. Jesus thought it well that his will should be done to the death. Even if there be no God, it will be grand to be a disciple of such a man, to do as he says, think as he thought--perhaps come to feel as he felt.'

My reader may wonder that one so young should have been able to think so practically--to the one point of action. But he was in earnest, and what lay at the root of his character, at the root of all that he did, felt, and became, was childlike simplicity and purity of nature. If the sins of his father were mercifully visited upon him, so likewise were the grace and loveliness of his mother. And between the two, Falconer had fared well.

As he descended the mountain, the one question was--his calling. With the faintest track to follow, with the clue of a spider's thread to guide him, he would have known that his business was to set out at once to find, and save his father. But never since the day when the hand of that father smote him, and Mary St. John found him bleeding on the floor, had he heard word or conjecture concerning him. If he were to set out to find him now, it would be to search the earth for one who might have vanished from it years ago. He might as well search the streets of a great city for a lost jewel. When the time came for him to find his father, if such an hour was written in the decrees of--I dare not say Fate, for Falconer hated the word--if such was the will of God, some sign would be given him--that is, some hint which he could follow with action. As he thought and thought it became gradually plainer that he must begin his obedience by getting ready for anything that God might require of him. Therefore he must go on learning till the call came.

But he shivered at the thought of returning to Aberdeen. Might he not continue his studies in Germany? Would that not be as good--possibly, from the variety of the experience, better? But how was it to be decided? By submitting the matter to the friend who made either possible. Dr. Anderson had been to him as a father: he would be guided by his pleasure.

He wrote, therefore, to Dr. Anderson, saying that he would return at once if he wished it, but that he would greatly prefer going to a German university for two years. The doctor replied that of course he would rather have him at home, but that he was confident Robert knew best what was best for himself; therefore he had only to settle where he thought proper, and the next summer he would come and see him, for he was not tied to Aberdeen any more than Robert.

II. HOME AGAIN

Four years passed before Falconer returned to his native country, during which period Dr. Anderson had visited him twice, and shown himself well satisfied with his condition and pursuits. The doctor had likewise visited Rothieden, and had comforted the heart of the grandmother with regard to her Robert. From what he learned upon this visit, he had arrived at a true conjecture, I believe, as to the cause of the great change which had suddenly taken place in the youth. But he never asked Robert a question leading in the direction of the grief which he saw the healthy and earnest nature of the youth gradually assimilating into his life. He had too much respect for sorrow to approach it with curiosity. He had learned to put off his shoes when he drew nigh the burning bush of human pain.

Robert had not settled at any of the universities, but had moved from one to the other as he saw fit, report guiding him to the men who spoke with authority. The time of doubt and anxious questioning was far from over, but the time was long gone by--if in his case it had ever been--when he could be like a wave of the sea, driven of the wind and tossed. He had ever one anchor of the soul, and he found that it held--the faith of Jesus (I say the faith of Jesus, not his own faith in Jesus), the truth of Jesus, the life of Jesus. However his intellect might be tossed on the waves of speculation and criticism, he found that the word the Lord had spoken remained steadfast; for in doing righteously, in loving mercy, in walking humbly, the conviction increased that Jesus knew the very secret of human life. Now and then some great vision gleamed across his soul of the working of all things towards a far-off goal of simple obedience to a law of life, which God knew, and which his son had justified through sorrow and pain. Again and again the words of the Master gave him a peep into a region where all was explicable, where all that was crooked might be made straight, where every mountain of wrong might be made low, and every valley of suffering exalted. Ever and again some one of the dark perplexities of humanity began to glimmer with light in its inmost depth. Nor was he without those moments of communion when the creature is lifted into the secret place of the Creator.

Looking back to the time when it seemed that he cried and was not heard, he saw that God had been hearing, had been answering, all the time; had been making him capable of receiving the gift for which he prayed. He saw that intellectual difficulty encompassing the highest operations of harmonizing truth, can no more affect their reality than the dulness of chaos disprove the motions of the wind of God over the face of its waters. He saw that any true revelation must come out of the unknown in God through the unknown in man. He saw that its truths must rise in the man as powers of life, and that only as that life grows and unfolds can the ever-lagging intellect gain glimpses of partial outlines fading away into the infinite--that, indeed, only in material things and the laws that belong to them, are outlines possible--even there, only in the picture of them which the mind that analyzes them makes for itself, not in the things themselves.

At the close of these four years, with his spirit calm and hopeful, truth his passion, and music, which again he had resumed and diligently cultivated, his pleasure, Falconer returned to Aberdeen. He was received by Dr. Anderson as if he had in truth been his own son. In the room stood a tall figure, with its back towards them, pocketing its handkerchief. The next moment the figure turned, and--could it be?--yes, it was Shargar. Doubt lingered only until he opened his mouth, and said 'Eh, Robert!' with which exclamation he threw himself upon him, and after a very undignified fashion began crying heartily. Tall as he was, Robert's great black head towered above him, and his shoulders were like a rock against which Shargar's slight figure leaned. He looked down like a compassionate mastiff upon a distressed Italian grayhound. His eyes shimmered with feeling, but Robert's tears, if he ever shed any, were kept for very solemn occasions. He was more likely to weep for awful joy than for any sufferings either in himself or others. 'Shargar!' pronounced in a tone full of a thousand memories, was all the greeting he returned; but his great manly hand pressed Shargar's delicate long-fingered one with a grasp which must have satisfied his friend that everything was as it had been between them, and that their friendship from henceforth would take a new start. For with all that Robert had seen, thought, and learned, now that the bitterness of loss had gone by, the old times and the old friends were dearer. If there was any truth in the religion of God's will, in which he was a disciple, every moment of life's history which had brought soul in contact with soul, must be sacred as a voice from behind the veil. Therefore he could not now rest until he had gone to see his grandmother.

'Will you come to Rothieden with me, Shargar? I beg your pardon--I oughtn't to keep up an old nickname,' said Robert, as they sat that evening with the doctor, over a tumbler of toddy.

'If you call me anything else, I'll cut my throat, Robert, as I told you before. If any one else does,' he added, laughing, 'I'll cut his throat.'

'Can he go with me, doctor?' asked Robert, turning to their host.

'Certainly. He has not been to Rothieden since he took his degree. He's an A.M. now, and has distinguished himself besides. You'll see him in his uniform soon, I hope. Let's drink his health, Robert. Fill your glass.'

The doctor filled his glass slowly and solemnly. He seldom drank even wine, but this was a rare occasion. He then rose, and with equal slowness, and a tremor in his voice which rendered it impossible to imagine the presence of anything but seriousness, said,

'Robert, my son, let's drink the health of George Moray, Gentleman. Stand up.'

Robert rose, and in his confusion Shargar rose too, and sat down again, blushing till his red hair looked yellow beside his cheeks. The men repeated the words, 'George Moray, Gentleman,' emptied their glasses, and resumed their seats. Shargar rose trembling, and tried in vain to speak. The reason in part was, that he sought to utter himself in English.

'Hoots! Damn English!' he broke out at last. 'Gin I be a gentleman, Dr. Anderson and Robert Falconer, it's you twa 'at's made me ane, an' God bless ye, an' I'm yer hoomble servant to a' etairnity.'

So saying, Shargar resumed his seat, filled his glass with trembling hand, emptied it to hide his feelings, but without success, rose once more, and retreated to the hall for a space.

The next morning Robert and Shargar got on the coach and went to Rothieden. Robert turned his head aside as they came near the bridge and the old house of Bogbonnie. But, ashamed of his weakness, he turned again and looked at the house. There it stood, all the same,--a thing for the night winds to howl in, and follow each other in mad gambols through its long passages and rooms, so empty from the first that not even a ghost had any reason for going there--a place almost without a history--dreary emblem of so many empty souls that have hidden their talent in a napkin, and have nothing to return for it when the Master calls them. Having looked this one in the face, he felt stronger to meet those other places before which his heart quailed yet more. He knew that Miss St. John had left soon after Ericson's death: whether he was sorry or glad that he should not see her he could not tell. He thought Rothieden would look like Pompeii, a city buried and disinterred; but when the coach drove into the long straggling street, he found the old love revive, and although the blood rushed back to his heart when Captain Forsyth's house came in view, he did not turn away, but made his eyes, and through them his heart, familiar with its desolation. He got down at the corner, and leaving Shargar to go on to The Boar's Head and look after the luggage, walked into his grandmother's house and straight into her little parlour. She rose with her old stateliness when she saw a stranger enter the room, and stood waiting his address.

'Weel, grannie,' said Robert, and took her in his arms.

'The Lord's name be praised!' faltered she. 'He's ower guid to the likes o' me.'

And she lifted up her voice and wept.

She had been informed of his coming, but she had not expected him till the evening; he was much altered, and old age is slow.

He had hardly placed her in her chair, when Betty came in. If she had shown him respect before, it was reverence now.

'Eh, sir!' she said, 'I didna ken it was you, or I wadna hae come into the room ohn chappit at the door. I'll awa' back to my kitchie.'

So saying, she turned to leave the room.

'Hoots! Betty,' cried Robert, 'dinna be a gowk. Gie 's a grip o yer han'.'

Betty stood staring and irresolute, overcome at sight of the manly bulk before her.

'Gin ye dinna behave yersel', Betty, I'll jist awa' ower to Muckledrum, an' hae a caw (drive) throu the sessions-buik.'

Betty laughed for the first time at the awful threat, and the ice once broken, things returned to somewhat of their old footing.

I must not linger on these days. The next morning Robert paid a visit to Bodyfauld, and found that time had there flowed so gently that it had left but few wrinkles and fewer gray hairs. The fields, too, had little change to show; and the hill was all the same, save that its pines had grown. His chief mission was to John Hewson and his wife. When he left for the continent, he was not so utterly absorbed in his own griefs as to forget Jessie. He told her story to Dr. Anderson, and the good man had gone to see her the same day.

In the evening, when he knew he should find them both at home, he walked into the cottage. They were seated by the fire, with the same pot hanging on the same crook for their supper. They rose, and asked him to sit down, but did not know him. When he told them who he was, they greeted him warmly, and John Hewson smiled something of the old smile, but only like it, for it had no 'rays proportionately delivered' from his mouth over his face.

After a little indifferent chat, Robert said,

'I came through Aberdeen yesterday, John.'

At the very mention of Aberdeen, John's head sunk. He gave no answer, but sat looking in the fire. His wife rose and went to the other end of the room, busying herself quietly about the supper. Robert thought it best to plunge into the matter at once.

'I saw Jessie last nicht,' he said.

Still there was no reply. John's face had grown hard as a stone face, but Robert thought rather from the determination to govern his feelings than from resentment.

'She's been doin' weel ever sin' syne,' he added.

Still no word from either; and Robert fearing some outburst of indignation ere he had said his say, now made haste.

'She's been a servant wi' Dr. Anderson for four year noo, an' he's sair pleased wi' her. She's a fine woman. But her bairnie's deid, an' that was a sair blow till her.'

He heard a sob from the mother, but still John made no sign.

'It was a bonnie bairnie as ever ye saw. It luikit in her face, she says, as gin it kent a' aboot it, and had only come to help her throu the warst o' 't; for it gaed hame 'maist as sune's ever she was richt able to thank God for sen'in' her sic an angel to lead her to repentance.'

'John,' said his wife, coming behind his chair, and laying her hand on his shoulder, 'what for dinna ye speyk? Ye hear what Maister Faukner says.--Ye dinna think a thing's clean useless 'cause there may be a spot upo' 't?' she added, wiping her eyes with her apron.

'A spot upo' 't?' cried John, starting to his feet. 'What ca' ye a spot?--Wuman, dinna drive me mad to hear ye lichtlie the glory o' virginity.'

'That's a' verra weel, John,' interposed Robert quietly; 'but there was ane thocht as muckle o' 't as ye do, an' wad hae been ashamed to hear ye speak that gait aboot yer ain dauchter.'

'I dinna unnerstan' ye,' returned Hewson, looking raised-like at him.

'Dinna ye ken, man, that amo' them 'at kent the Lord best whan he cam frae haiven to luik efter his ain--to seek and to save, ye ken--amo' them 'at cam roon aboot him to hearken till 'im, was lasses 'at had gane the wrang gait a'thegither,--no like your bonnie Jessie 'at fell but ance. Man, ye're jist like Simon the Pharisee, 'at was sae scunnert at oor Lord 'cause he loot the wuman 'at was a sinner tak her wull o' 's feet--the feet 'at they war gaein' to tak their wull o' efter anither fashion afore lang. He wad hae shawn her the door--Simon wad--like you, John; but the Lord tuik her pairt. An' lat me tell you, John--an' I winna beg yer pardon for sayin' 't, for it's God's trowth--lat me tell you, 'at gin ye gang on that gait ye'll be sidin' wi' the Pharisee, an' no wi' oor Lord. Ye may lippen to yer wife, ay, an' to Jessie hersel', that kens better nor eyther o' ye, no to mak little o' virginity. Faith! they think mair o' 't than ye do, I'm thinkin', efter a'; only it's no a thing to say muckle aboot. An' it's no to stan' for a'thing, efter a'.'

Silence followed. John sat down again, and buried his face in his hands. At length he murmured from between them,

'The lassie's weel?'

'Ay,' answered Robert; and silence followed again.

'What wad ye hae me do?' asked John, lifting his head a little.

'I wad hae ye sen' a kin' word till her. The lassie's hert's jist longin' efter ye. That's a'. And that's no ower muckle.'

''Deed no,' assented the mother.

John said nothing. But when his visitor rose he bade him a warm good-night.

When Robert returned to Aberdeen he was the bearer of such a message as made poor Jessie glad at heart. This was his first experience of the sort.

When he left the cottage, he did not return to the house, but threaded the little forest of pines, climbing the hill till he came out on its bare crown, where nothing grew but heather and blaeberries. There he threw himself down, and gazed into the heavens. The sun was below the horizon; all the dazzle was gone out of the gold, and the roses were fast fading; the downy blue of the sky was trembling into stars over his head; the brown dusk was gathering in the air; and a wind full of gentleness and peace came to him from the west. He let his thoughts go where they would, and they went up into the abyss over his head.

'Lord, come to me,' he cried in his heart, 'for I cannot go to thee. If I were to go up and up through that awful space for ages and ages, I should never find thee. Yet there thou art. The tenderness of thy infinitude looks upon me from those heavens. Thou art in them and in me. Because thou thinkest, I think. I am thine--all thine. I abandon myself to thee. Fill me with thyself. When I am full of thee, my griefs themselves will grow golden in thy sunlight. Thou holdest them and their cause, and wilt find some nobler atonement between them than vile forgetfulness and the death of love. Lord, let me help those that are wretched because they do not know thee. Let me tell them that thou, the Life, must needs suffer for and with them, that they may be partakers of thy ineffable peace. My life is hid in thine: take me in thy hand as Gideon bore the pitcher to the battle. Let me be broken if need be, that thy light may shine upon the lies which men tell them in thy name, and which eat away their hearts.'

Having persuaded Shargar to remain with Mrs. Falconer for a few days, and thus remove the feeling of offence she still cherished because of his 'munelicht flittin',' he returned to Dr. Anderson, who now unfolded his plans for him. These were, that he should attend the medical classes common to the two universities, and at the same time accompany him in his visits to the poor. He did not at all mean, he said, to determine Robert's life as that of a medical man, but from what he had learned of his feelings, he was confident that a knowledge of medicine would be invaluable to him. I think the good doctor must have foreseen the kind of life which Falconer would at length choose to lead, and with true and admirable wisdom, sought to prepare him for it. However this may be, Robert entertained the proposal gladly, went into the scheme with his whole heart, and began to widen that knowledge of and sympathy with the poor which were the foundation of all his influence over them.

For a time, therefore, he gave a diligent and careful attendance upon lectures, read sufficiently, took his rounds with Dr. Anderson, and performed such duties as he delegated to his greater strength. Had the healing art been far less of an enjoyment to him than it was, he could yet hardly have failed of great progress therein; but seeing that it accorded with his best feelings, profoundest theories, and loftiest hopes, and that he received it as a work given him to do, it is not surprising that a certain faculty of cure, almost partaking of the instinctive, should have been rapidly developed in him, to the wonder and delight of his friend and master.

In this labour he again spent about four years, during which time he gathered much knowledge of human nature, learning especially to judge it from no stand-point of his own, but in every individual case to take a new position whence the nature and history of the man should appear in true relation to the yet uncompleted result. He who cannot feel the humanity of his neighbour because he is different from himself in education, habits, opinions, morals, circumstances, objects, is unfit, if not unworthy, to aid him.

Within this period Shargar had gone out to India, where he had distinguished himself particularly on a certain harassing march. Towards the close of the four years he had leave of absence, and was on his way home. About the same time Robert, in consequence of a fever brought on by over-fatigue, was in much need of a holiday; and Dr. Anderson proposed that he should meet Moray at Southampton.

Shargar had no expectation of seeing him, and his delight, not greater on that account, broke out more wildly. No thinnest film had grown over his heart, though in all else he was considerably changed. The army had done everything that was wanted for his outward show of man. The drawling walk had vanished, and a firm step and soldierly stride had taken its place; his bearing was free, yet dignified; his high descent came out in the ease of his carriage and manners: there could be no doubt that at last Shargar was a gentleman. His hair had changed to a kind of red chestnut. His complexion was much darkened with the Indian sun. His eyes, too, were darker, and no longer rolled slowly from one object to another, but indicated by their quick glances a mind ready to observe and as ready to resolve. His whole appearance was more than prepossessing--it was even striking.

Robert was greatly delighted with the improvement in him, and far more when he found that his mind's growth had at least kept pace with his body's change. It would be more correct to say that it had preceded and occasioned it; for however much the army may be able to do in that way, it had certainly, in Moray's case, only seconded the law of inward growth working outward show.

The young men went up to London together, and great was the pleasure they had in each other's society, after so long a separation in which their hearts had remained unchanged while their natures had grown both worthy and capable of more honour and affection. They had both much to tell; for Robert was naturally open save in regard to his grief; and Shargar was proud of being able to communicate with Robert from a nearer level, in virtue of now knowing many things that Robert could not know. They went together to a hotel in St. Paul's Churchyard.

III. A MERE GLIMPSE

At the close of a fortnight, Falconer thought it time to return to his duties in Aberdeen. The day before the steamer sailed, they found themselves, about six o'clock, in Gracechurch Street. It was a fine summer evening. The street was less crowded than earlier in the afternoon, although there was a continuous stream of waggons, omnibuses, and cabs both ways. As they stood on the curbstone, a little way north of Lombard Street, waiting to cross--

'You see, Shargar,' said Robert, 'Nature will have her way. Not all the hurry and confusion and roar can keep the shadows out. Look: wherever a space is for a moment vacant, there falls a shadow, as grotesque, as strange, as full of unutterable things as any shadow on a field of grass and daisies.'

'I remember feeling the same kind of thing in India,' returned Shargar, 'where nothing looked as if it belonged to the world I was born in, but my own shadow. In such a street as this, however, all the shadows look as if they belonged to another world, and had no business here.'

'I quite feel that,' returned Falconer. 'They come like angels from the lovely west and the pure air, to show that London cannot hurt them, for it too is within the Kingdom of God--to teach the lovers of nature, like the old orthodox Jew, St. Peter, that they must not call anything common or unclean.'

Shargar made no reply, and Robert glanced round at him. He was staring with wide eyes into, not at the crowd of vehicles that filled the street. His face was pale, and strangely like the Shargar of old days.

'What's the matter with you?' Robert asked in some bewilderment.

Receiving no answer, he followed Shargar's gaze, and saw a strange sight for London city.

In the middle of the crowd of vehicles, with an omnibus before them, and a brewer's dray behind them, came a line of three donkey-carts, heaped high with bundles and articles of gipsy-gear. The foremost was conducted by a middle-aged woman of tall, commanding aspect, and expression both cunning and fierce. She walked by the donkey's head carrying a short stick, with which she struck him now and then, but which she oftener waved over his head like the truncheon of an excited marshal on the battle-field, accompanying its movements now with loud cries to the animal, now with loud response to the chaff of the omnibus conductor, the dray driver, and the tradesmen in carts about her. She was followed by a very handsome, olive-complexioned, wild-looking young woman, with her black hair done up in a red handkerchief, who conducted her donkey more quietly. Both seemed as much at home in the roar of Gracechurch Street as if they had been crossing a wild common. A loutish-looking young man brought up the rear with the third donkey. From the bundles on the foremost cart peeped a lovely, fair-haired, English-looking child.

Robert took all this in in a moment. The same moment Shargar's spell was broken.

'Lord, it is my mither!' he cried, and darted under a horse's neck into the middle of the ruck.

He needled his way through till he reached the woman. She was swearing at a cabman whose wheel had caught the point of her donkey's shaft, and was hauling him round. Heedless of everything, Shargar threw his arms about her, crying,

'Mither! mither!'

'Nane o' yer blastit humbug!' she exclaimed, as, with a vigorous throw and a wriggle, she freed herself from his embrace and pushed him away.

The moment she had him at arm's length, however, her hand closed upon his arm, and her other hand went up to her brow. From underneath it her eyes shot up and down him from head to foot, and he could feel her hand closing and relaxing and closing again, as if she were trying to force her long nails into his flesh. He stood motionless, waiting the result of her scrutiny, utterly unconscious that he caused a congestion in the veins of London, for every vehicle within sight of the pair had stopped. Falconer said a strange silence fell upon the street, as if all the things in it had been turned into shadows.

A rough voice, which sounded as if all London must have heard it, broke the silence. It was the voice of the cabman who had been in altercation with the woman. Bursting into an insulting laugh, he used words with regard to her which it is better to leave unrecorded. The same instant Shargar freed himself from her grasp, and stood by the fore wheel of the cab.

'Get down!' he said, in a voice that was not the less impressive that it was low and hoarse.

The fellow saw what he meant, and whipped his horse. Shargar sprung on the box, and dragged him down all but headlong.

'Now,' he said, 'beg my mother's pardon.'

'Be damned if I do, &c., &c.,' said the cabman.

'Then defend yourself,' said Shargar. 'Robert.'

Falconer was watching it all, and was by his side in a moment.

'Come on, you, &c., &c.,' cried the cabman, plucking up heart and putting himself in fighting shape. He looked one of those insolent fellows whom none see discomfited more gladly than the honest men of his own class. The same moment he lay between his horse's feet.

Shargar turned to Robert, and saying only, 'There, Robert!' turned again towards the woman. The cabman rose bleeding, and, desiring no more of the same, climbed on his box, and went off, belabouring his horse, and pursued by a roar from the street, for the spectators were delighted at his punishment.

'Now, mother,' said Shargar, panting with excitement.

'What ca' they ye?' she asked, still doubtful, but as proud of being defended as if the coarse words of her assailant had had no truth in them. 'Ye canna be my lang-leggit Geordie.'

'What for no?'

'Ye're a gentleman, faith!'

'An' what for no, again?' returned Shargar, beginning to smile.

'Weel, it's weel speired. Yer father was ane ony gait--gin sae be 'at ye are as ye say.'

Moray put his head close to hers, and whispered some words that nobody heard but herself.

'It's ower lang syne to min' upo' that,' she said in reply, with a look of cunning consciousness ill settled upon her fine features. 'But ye can be naebody but my Geordie. Haith, man!' she went on, regarding him once more from head to foot, 'but ye're a credit to me, I maun alloo. Weel, gie me a sovereign, an' I s' never come near ye.'

Poor Shargar in his despair turned half mechanically towards Robert. He felt that it was time to interfere.

'You forget, mother,' said Shargar, turning again to her, and speaking English now, 'it was I that claimed you, and not you that claimed me.'

She seemed to have no idea of what he meant.

'Come up the road here, to oor public, an' tak a glaiss, wuman,' said Falconer. 'Dinna haud the fowk luikin' at ye.'

The temptation of a glass of something strong, and the hope of getting money out of them, caused an instant acquiescence. She said a few words to the young woman, who proceeded at once to tie her donkey's head to the tail of the other cart.

'Shaw the gait than,' said the elder, turning again to Falconer.

Shargar and he led the way to St. Paul's Churchyard, and the woman followed faithfully. The waiter stared when they entered.

'Bring a glass of whisky,' said Falconer, as he passed on to their private room. When the whisky arrived, she tossed it off, and looked as if she would like another glass.

'Yer father 'ill hae ta'en ye up, I'm thinkin', laddie?' she said, turning to her son.

'No,' answered Shargar, gloomily. 'There's the man that took me up.'

'An' wha may ye be?' she asked, turning to Falconer.

'Mr. Falconer,' said Shargar.

'No a son o' Anerew Faukner?' she asked again, with evident interest.

'The same,' answered Robert.

'Well, Geordie,' she said, turning once more to her son, 'it's like mither, like father to the twa o' ye.'

'Did you know my father?' asked Robert, eagerly.

Instead of answering him she made another remark to her son.

'He needna be ashamed o' your company, ony gait--queer kin' o' a mither 'at I am.'

'He never was ashamed of my company,' said Shargar, still gloomily.

'Ay, I kent yer father weel eneuch,' she said, now answering Robert--'mair by token 'at I saw him last nicht. He was luikin' nae that ill.'

Robert sprung from his seat, and caught her by the arm.

'Ow! ye needna gang into sic a flurry. He'll no come near ye, I s' warran'.'

'Tell me where he is,' said Robert. 'Where did you see him? I'll gie ye a' 'at I hae gin ye'll tak me till him.'

'Hooly! hooly! Wha's to gang luikin' for a thrum in a hay-sow?' returned she, coolly. 'I only said 'at I saw him.'

'But are ye sure it was him?' asked Falconer.

'Ay, sure eneuch,' she answered.

'What maks ye sae sure?'

''Cause I never was vrang yet. Set a man ance atween my twa een, an' that 'll be twa 'at kens him whan 's ain mither 's forgotten 'im.'

'Did you speak to him?'

'Maybe ay, an' maybe no. I didna come here to be hecklet afore a jury.'

'Tell me what he's like,' said Robert, agitated with eager hope.

'Gin ye dinna ken what he's like, what for suld ye tak the trouble to speir? But 'deed ye'll ken what he's like whan ye fa' in wi' him,' she added, with a vindictive laugh--vindictive because he had given her only one glass of strong drink.

With the laugh she rose, and made for the door. They rose at the same moment to detain her. Like one who knew at once to fight and flee, she turned and stunned them as with a blow.

'She's a fine yoong thing, yon sister o' yours, Geordie. She'll be worth siller by the time she's had a while at the schuil.'

The men looked at each other aghast. When they turned their eyes she had vanished. They rushed to the door, and, parting, searched in both directions. But they were soon satisfied that it was of no use. Probably she had found a back way into Paternoster Row, whence the outlets are numerous.

IV. THE DOCTOR'S DEATH

But now that Falconer had a ground, even thus shadowy, for hoping--I cannot say believing--that his father might be in London, he could not return to Aberdeen. Moray, who had no heart to hunt for his mother, left the next day by the steamer. Falconer took to wandering about the labyrinthine city, and in a couple of months knew more about the metropolis--the west end excepted--than most people who had lived their lives in it. The west end is no doubt a considerable exception to make, but Falconer sought only his father, and the west end was the place where he was least likely to find him. Day and night he wandered into all sorts of places: the worse they looked the more attractive he found them. It became almost a craze with him. He could not pass a dirty court or low-browed archway. He might be there. Or he might have been there. Or it was such a place as he would choose for shelter. He knew to what such a life as his must have tended.

At first he was attracted only by tall elderly men. Such a man he would sometimes follow till his following made him turn and demand his object. If there was no suspicion of Scotch in his tone, Falconer easily apologized. If there was, he made such replies as might lead to some betrayal. He could not defend the course he was adopting: it had not the shadow of probability upon its side. Still the greatest successes the world has ever beheld had been at one time the greatest improbabilities! He could not choose but go on, for as yet he could think of no other way.

Neither could a man like Falconer long confine his interest to this immediate object, especially after he had, in following it, found opportunity of being useful. While he still made it his main object to find his father, that object became a centre from which radiated a thousand influences upon those who were as sheep that had no shepherd. He fell back into his old ways at Aberdeen, only with a boundless sphere to work in, and with the hope of finding his father to hearten him. He haunted the streets at night, went into all places of entertainment, often to the disgust of senses and soul, and made his way into the lowest forms of life without introduction or protection.

There was a certain stately air of the hills about him which was often mistaken for country inexperience, and men thought in consequence to make gain or game of him. But such found their mistake, and if not soon, then the more completely. Far from provoking or even meeting hostility, he soon satisfied those that persisted, that it was dangerous. In two years he became well known to the poor of a large district, especially on both sides of Shoreditch, for whose sake he made the exercise of his profession though not an object yet a ready accident.

He lived in lodgings in John Street--the same in which I found him when I came to know him. He made few acquaintances, and they were chiefly the house-surgeons of hospitals--to which he paid frequent visits.

He always carried a book in his pocket, but did not read much. On Sundays he generally went to some one of the many lonely heaths or commons of Surrey with his New Testament. When weary in London, he would go to the reading-room of the British Museum for an hour or two. He kept up a regular correspondence with Dr. Anderson.

At length he received a letter from him, which occasioned his immediate departure for Aberdeen. Until now, his friend, who was entirely satisfied with his mode of life, and supplied him freely with money, had not even expressed a wish to recall him, though he had often spoken of visiting him in London. It now appeared that, unwilling to cause him any needless anxiety, he had abstained from mentioning the fact that his health had been declining. He had got suddenly worse, and Falconer hastened to obey the summons he had sent him in consequence.

With a heavy heart he walked up to the hospitable door, recalling as he ascended the steps how he had stood there a helpless youth, in want of a few pounds to save his hopes, when this friend received him and bid him God-speed on the path he desired to follow. In a moment more he was shown into the study, and was passing through it to go to the cottage-room, when Johnston laid his hand on his arm.

'The maister's no up yet, sir,' he said, with a very solemn look. 'He's been desperate efter seein' ye, and I maun gang an' lat him ken 'at ye're here at last, for fear it suld be ower muckle for him, seein' ye a' at ance. But eh, sir!' he added, the tears gathering in his eyes, 'ye'll hardly ken 'im. He's that changed!'

Johnston left the study by the door to the cottage--Falconer had never known the doctor sleep there--and returning a moment after, invited him to enter. In the bed in the recess--the room unchanged, with its deal table, and its sanded floor--lay the form of his friend. Falconer hastened to the bedside, kneeled down, and took his hand speechless. The doctor was silent too, but a smile overspread his countenance, and revealed his inward satisfaction. Robert's heart was full, and he could only gaze on the worn face. At length he was able to speak.

'What for didna ye sen' for me?' he said. 'Ye never tellt me ye was ailin'.'

'Because you were doing good, Robert, my boy; and I who had done so little had no right to interrupt what you were doing. I wonder if God will give me another chance. I would fain do better. I don't think I could sit singing psalms to all eternity,' he added with a smile.

'Whatever good I may do afore my turn comes, I hae you to thank for 't. Eh, doctor, gin it hadna been for you!'

Robert's feelings overcame him. He resumed, brokenly,

'Ye gae me a man to believe in, whan my ain father had forsaken me, and my frien' was awa to God. Ye hae made me, doctor. Wi' meat an' drink an' learnin' an' siller, an' a'thing at ance, ye hae made me.'

'Eh, Robert!' said the dying man, half rising on his elbow, 'to think what God maks us a' to ane anither! My father did ten times for me what I hae dune for you. As I lie here thinkin' I may see him afore a week's ower, I'm jist a bairn again.'

As he spoke, the polish of his speech was gone, and the social refinement of his countenance with it. The face of his ancestors, the noble, sensitive, heart-full, but rugged, bucolic, and weather-beaten through centuries of windy ploughing, hail-stormed sheep-keeping, long-paced seed-sowing, and multiform labour, surely not less honourable in the sight of the working God than the fighting of the noble, came back in the face of the dying physician. From that hour to his death he spoke the rugged dialect of his fathers.

A day or two after this, Robert again sitting by his bedside,

'I dinna ken,' he said, 'whether it's richt--but I hae nae fear o' deith, an' yet I canna say I'm sure aboot onything. I hae seen mony a ane dee that cud hae no faith i' the Saviour; but I never saw that fear that some gude fowk wud hae ye believe maun come at the last. I wadna like to tak to ony papistry; but I never cud mak oot frae the Bible--and I read mair at it i' the jungle than maybe ye wad think--that it's a' ower wi' a body at their deith. I never heard them bring foret ony text but ane--the maist ridiculous hash 'at ever ye heard--to justifee 't.'

'I ken the text ye mean--“As the tree falleth so it shall lie,” or something like that--'at they say King Solomon wrote, though better scholars say his tree had fa'en mony a lang year afore that text saw the licht. I dinna believe sic a thocht was i' the man's heid when he wrote it. It is as ye say--ower contemptible to ca' an argument. I'll read it to ye ance mair.'

Robert got his Bible, and read the following portion from that wonderful book, so little understood, because it is so full of wisdom--the Book of Ecclesiastes:--

'Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.

'Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth.

'If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.

'He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.

'As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.

'In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.'

'Ay, ay; that's it,' said Dr. Anderson. 'Weel, I maun say again that they're ill aff for an argument that taks that for ane upo' sic a momentous subjec'. I prefer to say, wi' the same auld man, that I know not the works of God who maketh all. But I wish I could say I believed onything for certain sure. But whan I think aboot it--wad ye believe 't? the faith o' my father's mair to me nor ony faith o' my ain. That soonds strange. But it's this: I'm positeeve that that godly great auld man kent mair aboot a' thae things--I cud see 't i' the face o' 'm--nor ony ither man 'at ever I kent. An' it's no by comparison only. I'm sure he did ken. There was something atween God and him. An' I think he wasna likely to be wrang; an' sae I tak courage to believe as muckle as I can, though maybe no sae muckle as I fain wad.'

Robert, who from experience of himself, and the observations he had made by the bedsides of not a few dying men and women, knew well that nothing but the truth itself can carry its own conviction; that the words of our Lord are a body as it were in which the spirit of our Lord dwells, or rather the key to open the heart for the entrance of that spirit, turned now from all argumentation to the words of Jesus. He himself had said of them, 'They are spirit and they are life;' and what folly to buttress life and spirit with other powers than their own! From that day to the last, as often and as long as the dying man was able to listen to him, he read from the glad news just the words of the Lord. As he read thus, one fading afternoon, the doctor broke out with,

'Eh, Robert, the patience o' him! He didna quench the smokin' flax. There's little fire aboot me, but surely I ken in my ain hert some o' the risin' smoke o' the sacrifice. Eh! sic words as they are! An' he was gaein' doon to the grave himsel', no half my age, as peacefu', though the road was sae rouch, as gin he had been gaein' hame till 's father.'

'Sae he was,' returned Robert.

'Ay; but here am I lyin' upo' my bed, slippin' easy awa. An' there was he--'

The old man ceased. The sacred story was too sacred for speech. Robert sat with the New Testament open before him on the bed.

'The mair the words o' Jesus come into me,' the doctor began again, 'the surer I am o' seein' my auld Brahmin frien', Robert. It's true I thought his religion not only began but ended inside him. It was a' a booin' doon afore and an aspirin' up into the bosom o' the infinite God. I dinna mean to say 'at he wasna honourable to them aboot him. And I never saw in him muckle o' that pride to the lave (rest) that belangs to the Brahmin. It was raither a stately kin'ness than that condescension which is the vice o' Christians. But he had naething to do wi' them. The first comman'ment was a' he kent. He loved God--nae a God like Jesus Christ, but the God he kent--and that was a' he could. The second comman'ment--that glorious recognition o' the divine in humanity makin' 't fit and needfu' to be loved, that claim o' God upon and for his ain bairns, that love o' the neebour as yer'sel--he didna ken. Still there was religion in him; and he who died for the sins o' the whole world has surely been revealed to him lang er' noo, and throu the knowledge o' him, he noo dwalls in that God efter whom he aspired.'

Here was the outcome of many talks which Robert and the doctor had had together, as they laboured amongst the poor.

'Did ye never try,' Robert asked, 'to lat him ken aboot the comin' o' God to his world in Jesus Christ?'

'I couldna do muckle that way honestly, my ain faith was sae poor and sma'. But I tellt him what Christians believed. I tellt him aboot the character and history o' Christ. But it didna seem to tak muckle hauld o' him. It wasna interesstin' till him. Just ance whan I tellt him some things he had said aboot his relation to God--sic as, “I and my Father are one,”--and aboot the relation o' a' his disciples to God and himsel'--“I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one,” he said, wi' a smile, “The man was a good Brahmin.”

'It's little,' said Robert, 'the one great commandment can do withoot the other. It's little we can ken what God to love, or hoo to love him, withoot “thy neighbour as thyself.” Ony ane o' them withoot the ither stan's like the ae factor o' a multiplication, or ae wing upo' a laverock (lark).'

Towards the close of the week, he grew much feebler. Falconer scarcely left his room. He woke one midnight, and murmured as follows, with many pauses for breath and strength:

'Robert, my time's near, I'm thinkin'; for, wakin' an' sleepin', I'm a bairn again. I can hardly believe whiles 'at my father hasna a grup o' my han'. A meenute ago I was traivellin' throu a terrible driftin' o' snaw--eh, hoo it whustled and sang! and the cauld o' 't was stingin'; but my father had a grup o' me, an' I jist despised it, an' was stampin' 't doon wi' my wee bit feet, for I was like saven year auld or thereaboots. An' syne I thocht I heard my mither singin', and kent by that that the ither was a dream. I'm thinkin' a hantle 'ill luik dreamy afore lang. Eh! I wonner what the final waukin' 'ill be like.'

After a pause he resumed,

'Robert, my dear boy, ye're i' the richt gait. Haud on an' lat naething turn ye aside. Man, it's a great comfort to me to think that ye're my ain flesh and blude, an' nae that far aff. My father an' your great-gran'father upo' the gran'mither's side war ain brithers. I wonner hoo far doon it wad gang. Ye're the only ane upo' my father's side, you and yer father, gin he be alive, that I hae sib to me. My will's i' the bottom drawer upo' the left han' i' my writin' table i' the leebrary:--I hae left ye ilka plack 'at I possess. Only there's ae thing that I want ye to do. First o' a', ye maun gang on as yer doin' in London for ten year mair. Gin deein' men hae ony o' that foresicht that's been attreebuted to them in a' ages, it's borne in upo' me that ye wull see yer father again. At a' events, ye'll be helpin' some ill-faured sowls to a clean face and a bonny. But gin ye dinna fa' in wi' yer father within ten year, ye maun behaud a wee, an' jist pack up yer box, an' gang awa' ower the sea to Calcutta, an' du what I hae tellt ye to do i' that wull. I bind ye by nae promise, Robert, an' I winna hae nane. Things micht happen to put ye in a terrible difficulty wi' a promise. I'm only tellin' ye what I wad like. Especially gin ye hae fund yer father, ye maun gang by yer ain jeedgment aboot it, for there 'll be a hantle to do wi' him efter ye hae gotten a grup o' 'im. An' noo, I maun lie still, an' maybe sleep again, for I hae spoken ower muckle.'

Hoping that he would sleep and wake yet again, Robert sat still. After an hour, he looked, and saw that, although hitherto much oppressed, he was now breathing like a child. There was no sign save of past suffering: his countenance was peaceful as if he had already entered into his rest. Robert withdrew, and again seated himself. And the great universe became to him as a bird brooding over the breaking shell of the dying man.

On either hand we behold a birth, of which, as of the moon, we see but half. We are outside the one, waiting for a life from the unknown; we are inside the other, watching the departure of a spirit from the womb of the world into the unknown. To the region whither he goes, the man enters newly born. We forget that it is a birth, and call it a death. The body he leaves behind is but the placenta by which he drew his nourishment from his mother Earth. And as the child-bed is watched on earth with anxious expectancy, so the couch of the dying, as we call them, may be surrounded by the birth-watchers of the other world, waiting like anxious servants to open the door to which this world is but the wind-blown porch.

Extremes meet. As a man draws nigh to his second birth, his heart looks back to his childhood. When Dr. Anderson knew that he was dying, he retired into the simulacrum of his father's benn end.

As Falconer sat thinking, the doctor spoke. They were low, faint, murmurous sounds, for the lips were nearly at rest. Wanted no more for utterance, they were going back to the holy dust, which is God's yet.

'Father, father!' he cried quickly, in the tone and speech of a Scotch laddie, 'I'm gaein' doon. Haud a grup o' my han'.'

When Robert hurried to the bedside, he found that the last breath had gone in the words. The thin right hand lay partly closed, as if it had been grasping a larger hand. On the face lay confidence just ruffled with apprehension: the latter melted away, and nothing remained but that awful and beautiful peace which is the farewell of the soul to its servant.

Robert knelt and thanked God for the noble man.