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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.