PART I.—HIS BOYHOOD. CHAPTER I. A RECOLLECTION.
 Robert Falconer, school-boy, aged fourteen, thought he had never seen his father; that is, thought he had no recollection of having ever seen him. But the moment when my story begins, he had begun to doubt whether his belief in the matter was correct. And, as he went on thinking, he became more and more assured that he had seen his father somewhere about six years before, as near as a thoughtful boy of his age could judge of the lapse of a period that would form half of that portion of his existence which was bound into one by the reticulations of memory.
 
For there dawned upon his mind the vision of one Sunday afternoon. Betty had gone to church, and he was alone with his grandmother, reading The Pilgrim's Progress to her, when, just as Christian knocked at the wicket-gate, a tap came to the street door, and he went to open it. There he saw a tall, somewhat haggard-looking man, in a shabby black coat (the vision gradually dawned upon him till it reached the minuteness of all these particulars), his hat pulled down on to his projecting eyebrows, and his shoes very dusty, as with a long journey on foot—it was a hot Sunday, he remembered that—who looked at him very strangely, and without a word pushed him aside, and went straight into his grandmother's parlour, shutting the door behind him. He followed, not doubting that the man must have a right to go there, but questioning very much his right to shut him out. When he reached the door, however, he found it bolted; and outside he had to stay all alone, in the desolate remainder of the house, till Betty came home from church.
 
He could even recall, as he thought about it, how drearily the afternoon had passed. First he had opened the street door, and stood in it. There was nothing alive to be seen, except a sparrow picking up crumbs, and he would not stop till he was tired of him. The Royal Oak, down the street to the right, had not even a horseless gig or cart standing before it; and King Charles, grinning awfully in its branches on the signboard, was invisible from the distance at which he stood. In at the other end of the empty street, looked the distant uplands, whose waving corn and grass were likewise invisible, and beyond them rose one blue truncated peak in the distance, all of them wearily at rest this weary Sabbath day. However, there was one thing than which this was better, and that was being at church, which, to this boy at least, was the very fifth essence of dreariness.
 
He closed the door and went into the kitchen. That was nearly as bad. The kettle was on the fire, to be sure, in anticipation of tea; but the coals under it were black on the top, and it made only faint efforts, after immeasurable intervals of silence, to break into a song, giving a hum like that of a bee a mile off, and then relapsing into hopeless inactivity. Having just had his dinner, he was not hungry enough to find any resource in the drawer where the oatcakes lay, and, unfortunately, the old wooden clock in the corner was going, else there would have been some amusement in trying to torment it into demonstrations of life, as he had often done in less desperate circumstances than the present. At last he went up-stairs to the very room in which he now was, and sat down upon the floor, just as he was sitting now. He had not even brought his Pilgrim's Progress with him from his grandmother's room. But, searching about in all holes and corners, he at length found Klopstock's Messiah translated into English, and took refuge there till Betty came home. Nor did he go down till she called him to tea, when, expecting to join his grandmother and the stranger, he found, on the contrary, that he was to have his tea with Betty in the kitchen, after which he again took refuge with Klopstock in the garret, and remained there till it grew dark, when Betty came in search of him, and put him to bed in the gable-room, and not in his usual chamber. In the morning, every trace of the visitor had vanished, even to the thorn stick which he had set down behind the door as he entered.
 
All this Robert Falconer saw slowly revive on the palimpsest of his memory, as he washed it with the vivifying waters of recollection.
CHAPTER II. A VISITOR.
 It was a very bare little room in which the boy sat, but it was his favourite retreat. Behind the door, in a recess, stood an empty bedstead, without even a mattress upon it. This was the only piece of furniture in the room, unless some shelves crowded with papers tied up in bundles, and a cupboard in the wall, likewise filled with papers, could be called furniture. There was no carpet on the floor, no windows in the walls. The only light came from the door, and from a small skylight in the sloping roof, which showed that it was a garret-room. Nor did much light come from the open door, for there was no window on the walled stair to which it opened; only opposite the door a few steps led up into another garret, larger, but with a lower roof, unceiled, and perforated with two or three holes, the panes of glass filling which were no larger than the small blue slates which covered the roof: from these panes a little dim brown light tumbled into the room where the boy sat on the floor, with his head almost between his knees, thinking.
 
But there was less light than usual in the room now, though it was only half-past two o'clock, and the sun would not set for more than half-an-hour yet; for if Robert had lifted his head and looked up, it would have been at, not through, the skylight. No sky was to be seen. A thick covering of snow lay over the glass. A partial thaw, followed by frost, had fixed it there—a mass of imperfect cells and confused crystals. It was a cold place to sit in, but the boy had some faculty for enduring cold when it was the price to be paid for solitude. And besides, when he fell into one of his thinking moods, he forgot, for a season, cold and everything else but what he was thinking about—a faculty for which he was to be envied.
 
If he had gone down the stair, which described half the turn of a screw in its descent, and had crossed the landing to which it brought him, he could have entered another bedroom, called the gable or rather ga'le room, equally at his service for retirement; but, though carpeted and comfortably furnished, and having two windows at right angles, commanding two streets, for it was a corner house, the boy preferred the garret-room—he could not tell why. Possibly, windows to the streets were not congenial to the meditations in which, even now, as I have said, the boy indulged.
 
These meditations, however, though sometimes as abstruse, if not so continuous, as those of a metaphysician—for boys are not unfrequently more given to metaphysics than older people are able or, perhaps, willing to believe—were not by any means confined to such subjects: castle-building had its full share in the occupation of those lonely hours; and for this exercise of the constructive faculty, what he knew, or rather what he did not know, of his own history gave him scope enough, nor was his brain slow in supplying him with material corresponding in quantity to the space afforded. His mother had been dead for so many years that he had only the vaguest recollections of her tenderness, and none of her person. All he was told of his father was that he had gone abroad. His grandmother would never talk about him, although he was her own son. When the boy ventured to ask a question about where he was, or when he would return, she always replied—'Bairns suld haud their tongues.' Nor would she vouchsafe another answer to any question that seemed to her from the farthest distance to bear down upon that subject. 'Bairns maun learn to haud their tongues,' was the sole variation of which the response admitted. And the boy did learn to hold his tongue. Perhaps he would have thought less about his father if he had had brothers or sisters, or even if the nature of his grandmother had been such as to admit of their relationship being drawn closer—into personal confidence, or some measure of familiarity. How they stood with regard to each other will soon appear.
 
Whether the visions vanished from his brain because of the thickening of his blood with cold, or he merely acted from one of those undefined and inexplicable impulses which occasion not a few of our actions, I cannot tell, but all at once Robert started to his feet and hurried from the room. At the foot of the garret stair, between it and the door of the gable-room already mentioned, stood another door at right angles to both, of the existence of which the boy was scarcely aware, simply because he had seen it all his life and had never seen it open. Turning his back on this last door, which he took for a blind one, he went down a short broad stair, at the foot of which was a window. He then turned to the left into a long flagged passage or transe, passed the kitchen door on the one hand, and the double-leaved street door on the other; but, instead of going into the parlour, the door of which closed the transe, he stopped at the passage-window on the right, and there stood looking out.
 
What might be seen from this window certainly could not be called a very pleasant prospect. A broad street with low houses of cold gray stone is perhaps as uninteresting a form of street as any to be found in the world, and such was the street Robert looked out upon. Not a single member of the animal creation was to be seen in it, not a pair of eyes to be discovered looking out at any of the windows opposite. The sole motion was the occasional drift of a vapour-like film of white powder, which the wind would lift like dust from the snowy carpet that covered the street, and wafting it along for a few yards, drop again to its repose, till another stronger gust, prelusive of the wind about to rise at sun-down,—a wind cold and bitter as death—would rush over the street, and raise a denser cloud of the white water-dust to sting the face of any improbable person who might meet it in its passage. It was a keen, knife-edged frost, even in the house, and what Robert saw to make him stand at the desolate window, I do not know, and I believe he could not himself have told. There he did stand, however, for the space of five minutes or so, with nothing better filling his outer eyes at least than a bald spot on the crown of the street, whence the wind had swept away the snow, leaving it brown and bare, a spot of March in the middle of January.
 
He heard the town drummer in the distance, and let the sound invade his passive ears, till it crossed the opening of the street, and vanished 'down the town.'
 
'There's Dooble Sanny,' he said to himself—'wi' siccan cauld han's, 'at he's playin' upo' the drum-heid as gin he was loupin' in a bowie (leaping in a cask).'
 
Then he stood silent once more, with a look as if anything would be welcome to break the monotony.
 
While he stood a gentle timorous tap came to the door, so gentle indeed that Betty in the kitchen did not hear it, or she, tall and Roman-nosed as she was, would have answered it before the long-legged dreamer could have reached the door, though he was not above three yards from it. In lack of anything better to do, Robert stalked to the summons. As he opened the door, these words greeted him:
 
'Is Robert at—eh! it's Bob himsel'! Bob, I'm byous (exceedingly) cauld.'
 
'What for dinna ye gang hame, than?'
 
'What for wasna ye at the schuil the day?'
 
'I spier ae queston at you, and ye answer me wi' anither.'
 
'Weel, I hae nae hame to gang till.'
 
'Weel, and I had a sair heid (a headache). But whaur's yer hame gane till than?'
 
'The hoose is there a' richt, but whaur my mither is I dinna ken. The door's lockit, an' Jeames Jaup, they tell me 's tane awa' the key. I doobt my mither's awa' upo' the tramp again, and what's to come o' me, the Lord kens.'
 
'What's this o' 't?' interposed a severe but not unmelodious voice, breaking into the conversation between the two boys; for the parlour door had opened without Robert's hearing it, and Mrs. Falconer, his grandmother, had drawn near to the speakers.
 
'What's this o' 't?' she asked again. 'Wha's that ye're conversin' wi' at the door, Robert? Gin it be ony decent laddie, tell him to come in, and no stan' at the door in sic a day 's this.'
 
As Robert hesitated with his reply, she looked round the open half of the door, but no sooner saw with whom he was talking than her tone changed. By this time Betty, wiping her hands in her apron, had completed the group by taking her stand in the kitchen door.
 
'Na, na,' said Mrs. Falconer. 'We want nane sic-like here. What does he want wi' you, Robert? Gie him a piece, Betty, and lat him gang.—Eh, sirs! the callant hasna a stockin'-fit upo' 'im—and in sic weather!'
 
For, before she had finished her speech, the visitor, as if in terror of her nearer approach, had turned his back, and literally showed her, if not a clean pair of heels, yet a pair of naked heels from between the soles and uppers of his shoes: if he had any stockings at all, they ceased before they reached his ankles.
 
'What ails him at me?' continued Mrs. Falconer, 'that he rins as gin I war a boodie? But it's nae wonner he canna bide the sicht o' a decent body, for he's no used till 't. What does he want wi' you, Robert?'
 
But Robert had a reason for not telling his grandmother what the boy had told him: he thought the news about his mother would only make her disapprove of him the more. In this he judged wrong. He did not know his grandmother yet.
 
'He's in my class at the schuil,' said Robert, evasively.
 
'Him? What class, noo?'
 
Robert hesitated one moment, but, compelled to give some answer, said, with confidence,
 
'The Bible-class.'
 
'I thocht as muckle! What gars ye play at hide and seek wi' me? Do ye think I dinna ken weel eneuch there's no a lad or a lass at the schuil but 's i' the Bible-class? What wants he here?'
 
'Ye hardly gae him time to tell me, grannie. Ye frichtit him.'
 
'Me fricht him! What for suld I fricht him, laddie? I'm no sic ferlie (wonder) that onybody needs be frichtit at me.'
 
The old lady turned with visible, though by no means profound offence upon her calm forehead, and walking back into her parlour, where Robert could see the fire burning right cheerily, shut the door, and left him and Betty standing together in the transe. The latter returned to the kitchen, to resume the washing of the dinner-dishes; and the former returned to his post at the window. He had not stood more than half a minute, thinking what was to be done with his school-fellow deserted of his mother, when the sound of a coach-horn drew his attention to the right, down the street, where he could see part of the other street which crossed it at right angles, and in which the gable of the house stood. A minute after, the mail came in sight—scarlet, spotted with snow—and disappeared, going up the hill towards the chief hostelry of the town, as fast as four horses, tired with the bad footing they had had through the whole of the stage, could draw it after them. By this time the twilight was falling; for though the sun had not yet set, miles of frozen vapour came between him and this part of the world, and his light was never very powerful so far north at this season of the year.
 
Robert turned into the kitchen, and began to put on his shoes. He had made up his mind what to do.
 
'Ye're never gaein' oot, Robert?' said Betty, in a hoarse tone of expostulation.
 
''Deed am I, Betty. What for no?'
 
'You 'at's been in a' day wi' a sair heid! I'll jist gang benn the hoose and tell the mistress, and syne we'll see what she'll please to say till 't.'
 
'Ye'll do naething o' the kin', Betty. Are ye gaein' to turn clash-pyet (tell-tale) at your age?'
 
'What ken ye aboot my age? There's never a man-body i' the toon kens aught aboot my age.'
 
'It's ower muckle for onybody to min' upo' (remember), is 't, Betty?'
 
'Dinna be ill-tongued, Robert, or I'll jist gang benn the hoose to the mistress.'
 
'Betty, wha began wi' bein' ill-tongued? Gin ye tell my grandmither that I gaed oot the nicht, I'll gang to the schuilmaister o' Muckledrum, and get a sicht o' the kirstenin' buik; an' gin yer name binna there, I'll tell ilkabody I meet 'at oor Betty was never kirstened; and that'll be a sair affront, Betty.'
 
'Hoot! was there ever sic a laddie!' said Betty, attempting to laugh it off. 'Be sure ye be back afore tay-time, 'cause yer grannie 'ill be speirin' efter ye, and ye wadna hae me lee aboot ye?'
 
'I wad hae naebody lee about me. Ye jist needna lat on 'at ye hear her. Ye can be deif eneuch when ye like, Betty. But I s' be back afore tay-time, or come on the waur.'
 
Betty, who was in far greater fear of her age being discovered than of being unchristianized in the search, though the fact was that she knew nothing certain about the matter, and had no desire to be enlightened, feeling as if she was thus left at liberty to hint what she pleased,—Betty, I say, never had any intention of going 'benn the hoose to the mistress.' For the threat was merely the rod of terror which she thought it convenient to hold over the back of the boy, whom she always supposed to be about some mischief except he were in her own presence and visibly reading a book: if he were reading aloud, so much the better. But Robert likewise kept a rod for his defence, and that was Betty's age, which he had discovered to be such a precious secret that one would have thought her virtue depended in some cabalistic manner upon the concealment of it. And, certainly, nature herself seemed to favour Betty's weakness, casting such a mist about the number of her years as the goddesses of old were wont to cast about a wounded favourite; for some said Betty was forty, others said she was sixty-five, and, in fact, almost everybody who knew her had a different belief on the matter.
 
By this time Robert had conquered the difficulty of induing boots as hard as a thorough wetting and as thorough a drying could make them, and now stood prepared to go. His object in setting out was to find the boy whom his grandmother had driven from the door with a hastier and more abject flight than she had in the least intended. But, if his grandmother should miss him, as Betty suggested, and inquire where he had been, what was he to say? He did not mind misleading his grannie, but he had a great objection to telling her a lie. His grandmother herself delivered him from this difficulty.
 
'Robert, come here,' she called from the parlour door. And Robert obeyed.
 
'Is 't dingin' on, Robert?' she asked.
 
'No, grannie; it's only a starnie o' drift.'
 
The meaning of this was that there was no fresh snow falling, or beating on, only a little surface snow blowing about.
 
'Weel, jist pit yer shune on, man, and rin up to Miss Naper's upo' the Squaur, and say to Miss Naper, wi' my compliments, that I wad be sair obleeged till her gin she wad len' me that fine receipt o' hers for crappit heids, and I'll sen' 't back safe the morn's mornin'. Rin, noo.'
 
This commission fell in admirably with Robert's plans, and he started at once.
CHAPTER III. THE BOAR'S HEAD.
 Miss Napier was the eldest of three maiden sisters who kept the principal hostelry of Rothieden, called The Boar's Head; from which, as Robert reached the square in the dusk, the mail-coach was moving away with a fresh quaternion of horses. He found a good many boxes standing upon the pavement close by the archway that led to the inn-yard, and around them had gathered a group of loungers, not too cold to be interested. These were looking towards the windows of the inn, where the owner of the boxes had evidently disappeared.
 
'Saw ye ever sic a sicht in oor toon afore!' said Dooble Sanny, as people generally called him, his name being Alexander Alexander, pronounced, by those who chose to speak of him with the ordinary respect due from one mortal to another, Sandy Elshender. Double Sandy was a soutar, or shoemaker, remarkable for his love of sweet sounds and whisky. He was, besides, the town-crier, who went about with a drum at certain hours of the morning and evening, like a perambulating clock, and also made public announcements of sales, losses, &c.; for the rest—a fierce, fighting fellow when in anger or in drink, which latter included the former.
 
'What's the sicht, Sandy?' asked Robert, coming up with his hands in the pockets of his trowsers.
 
'Sic a sicht as ye never saw, man,' returned Sandy; 'the bonniest leddy ever man set his ee upo'. I culd na hae thocht there had been sic a woman i' this warl'.'
 
'Hoot, Sandy!' said Robert, 'a body wad think she was tint (lost) and ye had the cryin' o' her. Speyk laicher, man; she'll maybe hear ye. Is she i' the inn there?'
 
'Ay is she,' answered Sandy. 'See sic a warl' o' kists as she's brocht wi' her,' he continued, pointing towards the pile of luggage. 'Saw ye ever sic a bourach (heap)? It jist blecks (beats) me to think what ae body can du wi' sae mony kists. For I mayna doobt but there's something or ither in ilka ane o' them. Naebody wad carry aboot toom (empty) kists wi' them. I cannot mak' it oot.'
 
The boxes might well surprise Sandy, if we may draw any conclusions from the fact that the sole implement of personal adornment which he possessed was two inches of a broken comb, for which he had to search when he happened to want it, in the drawer of his stool, among awls, lumps of rosin for his violin, masses of the same substance wrought into shoemaker's wax for his ends, and packets of boar's bristles, commonly called birse, for the same.
 
'Are thae a' ae body's?' asked Robert.
 
'Troth are they. They're a' hers, I wat. Ye wad hae thocht she had been gaein' to The Bothie; but gin she had been that, there wad hae been a cairriage to meet her,' said Crookit Caumill, the ostler.
 
The Bothie was the name facetiously given by Alexander, Baron Rothie, son of the Marquis of Boarshead, to a house he had built in the neighbourhood, chiefly for the accommodation of his bachelor friends from London during the shooting-season.
 
'Haud yer tongue, Caumill,' said the shoemaker. 'She's nae sic cattle, yon.'
 
'Haud up the bit bowat (stable-lantern), man, and lat Robert here see the direction upo' them. Maybe he'll mak' something o't. He's a fine scholar, ye ken,' said another of the bystanders.
 
The ostler held the lantern to the card upon one of the boxes, but Robert found only an M., followed by something not very definite, and a J., which might have been an I., Rothieden, Driftshire, Scotland.
 
As he was not immediate with his answer, Peter Lumley, one of the group, a lazy ne'er-do-weel, who had known better days, but never better manners, and was seldom quite drunk, and seldomer still quite sober, struck in with,
 
'Ye dinna ken a' thing yet, ye see, Robbie.'
 
From Sandy this would have been nothing but a good-humoured attempt at facetiousness. From Lumley it meant spite, because Robert's praise was in his ears.
 
'I dinna preten' to ken ae hair mair than ye do yersel', Mr. Lumley; and that's nae sayin' muckle, surely,' returned Robert, irritated at his tone more than at his words.
 
The bystanders laughed, and Lumley flew into a rage.
 
'Haud yer ill tongue, ye brat,' he said. 'Wha' are ye to mak' sic remarks upo' yer betters? A'body kens yer gran'father was naething but the blin' piper o' Portcloddie.'
 
This was news to Robert—probably false, considering the quarter whence it came. But his mother-wit did not forsake him.
 
'Weel, Mr. Lumley,' he answered, 'didna he pipe weel? Daur ye tell me 'at he didna pipe weel?—as weel's ye cud hae dune 't yersel', noo, Mr. Lumley?'
 
The laugh again rose at Lumley's expense, who was well known to have tried his hand at most things, and succeeded in nothing. Dooble Sanny was especially delighted.
 
'De'il hae ye for a de'il's brat! 'At I suld sweer!' was all Lumley's reply, as he sought to conceal his mortification by attempting to join in the laugh against himself. Robert seized the opportunity of turning away and entering the house.
 
'That ane's no to be droont or brunt aither,' said Lumley, as he disappeared.
 
'He'll no be hang't for closin' your mou', Mr. Lumley,' said the shoemaker.
 
Thereupon Lumley turned and followed Robert into the inn.
 
Robert had delivered his message to Miss Napier, who sat in an arm-chair by the fire, in a little comfortable parlour, held sacred by all about the house. She was paralytic, and unable to attend to her guests further than by giving orders when anything especial was referred to her decision. She was an old lady—nearly as old as Mrs. Falconer—and wore glasses, but they could not conceal the kindness of her kindly eyes. Probably from giving less heed to a systematic theology, she had nothing of that sternness which first struck a stranger on seeing Robert's grandmother. But then she did not know what it was to be contradicted; and if she had been married, and had had sons, perhaps a sternness not dissimilar might have shown itself in her nature.
 
'Noo ye maunna gang awa' till ye get something,' she said, after taking the receipt in request from a drawer within her reach, and laying it upon the table. But ere she could ring the bell which stood by her side, one of her servants came in.
 
'Please, mem,' she said, 'Miss Letty and Miss Lizzy's seein' efter the bonny leddy; and sae I maun come to you.'
 
'Is she a' that bonny, Meg?' asked her mistress.
 
'Na, na, she's nae sae fearsome bonny; but Miss Letty's unco ta'en wi' her, ye ken. An' we a' say as Miss Letty says i' this hoose. But that's no the pint. Mr. Lumley's here, seekin' a gill: is he to hae't?'
 
'Has he had eneuch already, do ye think, Meg?'
 
'I dinna ken aboot eneuch, mem; that's ill to mizzer; but I dinna think he's had ower muckle.'
 
'Weel, lat him tak' it. But dinna lat him sit doon.'
 
'Verra weel, mem,' said Meg, and departed.
 
'What gars Mr. Lumley say 'at my gran'father was the blin' piper o' Portcloddie? Can ye tell me, Miss Naper?' asked Robert.
 
'Whan said he that, Robert?'
 
'Jist as I cam in.'
 
Miss Napier rang the bell. Another maid appeared.
 
'Sen' Meg here direckly.'
 
Meg came, her eyes full of interrogation.
 
'Dinna gie Lumley a drap. Set him up to insult a young gentleman at my door-cheek! He s' no hae a drap here the nicht. He 's had ower muckle, Meg, already, an' ye oucht to hae seen that.'
 
''Deed, mem, he 's had mair than ower muckle, than; for there's anither gill ower the thrapple o' 'm. I div my best, mem, but, never tastin' mysel', I canna aye tell hoo muckle 's i' the wame o' a' body 'at comes in.'
 
'Ye're no fit for the place, Meg; that's a fac'.'
 
At this charge Meg took no offence, for she had been in the place for twenty years. And both mistress and maid laughed the moment they parted company.
 
'Wha's this 'at's come the nicht, Miss Naper, 'at they're sae ta'en wi'?' asked Robert.
 
'Atweel, I dinna ken yet. She's ower bonnie by a' accoonts to be gaein' about her lane (alone). It's a mercy the baron's no at hame. I wad hae to lock her up wi' the forks and spunes.'
 
'What for that?' asked Robert.
 
But Miss Napier vouchsafed no further explanation. She stuffed his pockets with sweet biscuits instead, dismissed him in haste, and rang the bell.
 
'Meg, whaur hae they putten the stranger-leddy?'
 
'She's no gaein' to bide at our hoose, mem.'
 
'What say ye, lass? She's never gaein' ower to Lucky Happit's, is she?'
 
'Ow na, mem. She's a leddy, ilka inch o' her. But she's some sib (relation) to the auld captain, and she's gaein' doon the street as sune's Caumill's ready to tak her bit boxes i' the barrow. But I doobt there'll be maist three barrowfu's o' them.'
 
'Atweel. Ye can gang.'
CHAPTER IV. SHARGAR.
 Robert went out into the thin drift, and again crossing the wide desolate-looking square, turned down an entry leading to a kind of court, which had once been inhabited by a well-to-do class of the townspeople, but had now fallen in estimation. Upon a stone at the door of what seemed an outhouse he discovered the object of his search.
 
'What are ye sittin' there for, Shargar?'
 
Shargar is a word of Gaelic origin, applied, with some sense of the ridiculous, to a thin, wasted, dried-up creature. In the present case it was the nickname by which the boy was known at school; and, indeed, where he was known at all.
 
'What are ye sittin' there for, Shargar? Did naebody offer to tak ye in?'
 
'Na, nane o' them. I think they maun be a' i' their beds. I'm most dreidfu' cauld.'
 
The fact was, that Shargar's character, whether by imputation from his mother, or derived from his own actions, was none of the best. The consequence was, that, although scarcely one of the neighbours would have allowed him to sit there all night, each was willing to wait yet a while, in the hope that somebody else's humanity would give in first, and save her from the necessity of offering him a seat by the fireside, and a share of the oatmeal porridge which probably would be scanty enough for her own household. For it must be borne in mind that all the houses in the place were occupied by poor people, with whom the one virtue, Charity, was, in a measure, at home, and amidst many sins, cardinal and other, managed to live in even some degree of comfort.
 
'Get up, than, Shargar, ye lazy beggar! Or are ye frozen to the door-stane? I s' awa' for a kettle o' bilin' water to lowse ye.'
 
'Na, na, Bob. I'm no stucken. I'm only some stiff wi' the cauld; for wow, but I am cauld!' said Shargar, rising with difficulty. 'Gie 's a haud o' yer han', Bob.'
 
Robert gave him his hand, and Shargar was straightway upon his feet.
 
'Come awa' noo, as fest and as quaiet 's ye can.'
 
'What are ye gaein' to du wi' me, Bob?'
 
'What's that to you, Shargar?'
 
'Naything. Only I wad like to ken.'
 
'Hae patience, and ye will ken. Only mind ye do as I tell ye, and dinna speik a word.'
 
Shargar followed in silence.
 
On the way Robert remembered that Miss Napier had not, after all, given him the receipt for which his grandmother had sent him. So he returned to The Boar's Head, and, while he went in, left Shargar in the archway, to shiver, and try in vain to warm his hands by the alternate plans of slapping them on the opposite arms, and hiding them under them.
 
When Robert came out, he saw a man talking to him under the lamp. The moment his eyes fell upon the two, he was struck by a resemblance between them. Shargar was right under the lamp, the man to the side of it, so that Shargar was shadowed by its frame, and the man was in its full light. The latter turned away, and passing Robert, went into the inn.
 
'Wha's that?' asked Robert.
 
'I dinna ken,' answered Shargar. 'He spak to me or ever I kent he was there, and garred my hert gie sic a loup 'at it maist fell into my breeks.'
 
'And what said he to ye?'
 
'He said was the deevil at my lug, that I did naething but caw my han's to bits upo' my shoothers.'
 
'And what said ye to that?'
 
'I said I wissed he was, for he wad aiblins hae some spare heat aboot him, an' I hadna freely (quite) eneuch.'
 
'Weel dune, Shargar! What said he to that?'
 
'He leuch, and speirt gin I wad list, and gae me a shillin'.'
 
'Ye didna tak it, Shargar?' asked Robert in some alarm.
 
'Ay did I. Catch me no taking a shillin'!'
 
'But they'll haud ye till 't.'
 
'Na, na. I'm ower shochlin' (in-kneed) for a sodger. But that man was nae sodger.'
 
'And what mair said he?'
 
'He speirt what I wad do wi' the shillin'.'
 
'And what said ye?'
 
'Ow! syne ye cam' oot, and he gaed awa'.'
 
'And ye dinna ken wha it was?' repeated Robert.
 
'It was some like my brither, Lord Sandy; but I dinna ken,' said Shargar.
 
By this time they had arrived at Yule the baker's shop.
 
'Bide ye here,' said Robert, who happened to possess a few coppers, 'till I gang into Eel's.'
 
Shargar stood again and shivered at the door, till Robert came out with a penny loaf in one hand, and a twopenny loaf in the other.
 
'Gie's a bit, Bob,' said Shargar. 'I'm as hungry as I am cauld.'
 
'Bide ye still,' returned Robert. 'There's a time for a' thing, and your time 's no come to forgather wi' this loaf yet. Does na it smell fine? It's new frae the bakehoose no ten minutes ago. I ken by the fin' (feel) o' 't.'
 
'Lat me fin' 't,' said Shargar, stretching out one hand, and feeling his shilling with the other.
 
'Na. Yer han's canna be clean. And fowk suld aye eat clean, whether they gang clean or no.'
 
'I'll awa' in an' buy ane oot o' my ain shillin',' said Shargar, in a tone of resolute eagerness.
 
'Ye'll do naething o' the kin',' returned Robert, darting his hand at his collar. 'Gie me the shillin'. Ye'll want it a' or lang.'
 
Shargar yielded the coin and slunk behind, while Robert again led the way till they came to his grandmother's door.
 
'Gang to the ga'le o' the hoose there, Shargar, and jist keek roon' the neuk at me; and gin I whustle upo' ye, come up as quaiet 's ye can. Gin I dinna, bide till I come to ye.'
 
Robert opened the door cautiously. It was never locked except at night, or when Betty had gone to the well for water, or to the butcher's or baker's, or the prayer-meeting, upon which occasions she put the key in her pocket, and left her mistress a prisoner. He looked first to the right, along the passage, and saw that his grandmother's door was shut; then across the passage to the left, and saw that the kitchen door was likewise shut, because of the cold, for its normal position was against the wall. Thereupon, closing the door, but keeping the handle in his hand, and the bolt drawn back, he turned to the street and whistled soft and low. Shargar had, in a moment, dragged his heavy feet, ready to part company with their shoes at any instant, to Robert's side. He bent his ear to Robert's whisper.
 
'Gang in there, and creep like a moose to the fit o' the stair. I maun close the door ahin' 's,' said he, opening the door as he spoke.
 
'I'm fleyt (frightened), Robert.'
 
'Dinna be a fule. Grannie winna bite aff yer heid. She had ane till her denner, the day, an' it was ill sung (singed).'
 
'What ane o'?'
 
'A sheep's heid, ye gowk (fool). Gang in direckly.'
 
Shargar persisted no longer, but, taking about four steps a minute, slunk past the kitchen like a thief—not so carefully, however, but that one of his soles yet looser than the other gave one clap upon the flagged passage, when Betty straightway stood in the kitchen door, a fierce picture in a deal frame. By this time Robert had closed the outer door, and was following at Shargar's heels.
 
'What's this?' she cried, but not so loud as to reach the ears of Mrs. Falconer; for, with true Scotch foresight, she would not willingly call in another power before the situation clearly demanded it. 'Whaur's Shargar gaein' that gait?'
 
'Wi' me. Dinna ye see me wi' him? I'm nae a thief, nor yet's Shargar.'
 
'There may be twa opingons upo' that, Robert. I s' jist awa' benn to the mistress. I s' hae nae sic doin's i' my hoose.'
 
'It's nae your hoose, Betty. Dinna lee.'
 
'Weel, I s' hae nae sic things gang by my kitchie door. There, Robert! what 'll ye mak' o' that? There's nae offence, there, I houp, gin it suldna be a'thegither my ain hoose. Tak Shargar oot o' that, or I s' awa' benn the hoose, as I tell ye.'
 
Meantime Shargar was standing on the stones, looking like a terrified white rabbit, and shaking from head to foot with cold and fright combined.
 
'I'll tak him oot o' this, but it's up the stair, Betty. An' gin ye gang benn the hoose aboot it, I sweir to ye, as sure 's death, I'll gang doon to Muckledrum upo' Setterday i' the efternune.'
 
'Gang awa' wi' yer havers. Only gin the mistress speirs onything aboot it, what am I to say?'
 
'Bide till she speirs. Auld Spunkie says, “Ready-made answers are aye to seek.” And I say, Betty, hae ye a cauld pitawta (potato)?'
 
'I'll luik and see. Wadna ye like it het up?'
 
'Ow ay, gin ye binna lang aboot it.'
 
Suddenly a bell rang, shrill and peremptory, right above Shargar's head, causing in him a responsive increase of trembling.
 
'Haud oot o' my gait. There's the mistress's bell,' said Betty.
 
'Jist bide till we're roon' the neuk and on to the stair,' said Robert, now leading the way.
 
Betty watched them safe round the corner before she made for the parlour, little thinking to what she had become an unwilling accomplice, for she never imagined that more than an evening's visit was intended by Shargar, which in itself seemed to her strange and improper enough even for such an eccentric boy as Robert to encourage.
 
Shargar followed in mortal terror, for, like Christian in The Pilgrim's Progress, he had no armour to his back. Once round the corner, two strides of three steps each took them to the top of the first stair, Shargar knocking his head in the darkness against the never-opened door. Again three strides brought them to the top of the second flight; and turning once more, still to the right, Robert led Shargar up the few steps into the higher of the two garrets.
 
Here there was just glimmer enough from the sky to discover the hollow of a close bedstead, built in under the sloping roof, which served it for a tester, while the two ends and most of the front were boarded up to the roof. This bedstead fortunately was not so bare as the one in the other room, although it had not been used for many years, for an old mattress covered the boards with which it was bottomed.
 
'Gang in there, Shargar. Ye'll be warmer there than upo' the door-step ony gait. Pit aff yer shune.'
 
Shargar obeyed, full of delight at finding himself in such good quarters. Robert went to a forsaken press in the room, and brought out an ancient cloak of tartan, of the same form as what is now called an Inverness cape, a blue dress-coat, with plain gilt buttons, which shone even now in the all but darkness, and several other garments, amongst them a kilt, and heaped them over Shargar as he lay on the mattress. He then handed him the twopenny and the penny loaves, which were all his stock had reached to the purchase of, and left him, saying,—
 
'I maun awa' to my tay, Shargar. I'll fess ye a cauld tawtie het again, gin Betty has ony. Lie still, and whatever ye do, dinna come oot o' that.'
 
The last injunction was entirely unnecessary.
 
'Eh, Bob, I'm jist in haven!' said the poor creature, for his skin began to feel the precious possibility of reviving warmth in the distance.
 
Now that he had gained a new burrow, the human animal soon recovered from his fears as well. It seemed to him, in the novelty of the place, that he had made so many doublings to reach it, that there could be no danger of even the mistress of the house finding him out, for she could hardly be supposed to look after such a remote corner of her dominions. And then he was boxed in with the bed, and covered with no end of warm garments, while the friendly darkness closed him and his shelter all round. Except the faintest blue gleam from one of the panes in the roof, there was soon no hint of light anywhere; and this was only sufficient to make the darkness visible, and thus add artistic effect to the operation of it upon Shargar's imagination—a faculty certainly uneducated in Shargar, but far, very far from being therefore non-existent. It was, indeed, actively operative, although, like that of many a fine lady and gentleman, only in relation to such primary questions as: 'What shall we eat? And what shall we drink? And wherewithal shall we be clothed?' But as he lay and devoured the new 'white breid,' his satisfaction—the bare delight of his animal existence—reached a pitch such as even this imagination, stinted with poverty, and frost-bitten with maternal oppression, had never conceived possible. The power of enjoying the present without anticipation of the future or regard of the past, is the especial privilege of the animal nature, and of the human nature in proportion as it has not been developed beyond the animal. Herein lies the happiness of cab horses and of tramps: to them the gift of forgetfulness is of worth inestimable. Shargar's heaven was for the present gained.
 
 
CHAPTER V. THE SYMPOSIUM.
 Robert had scarcely turned out of the square on his way to find Shargar, when a horseman entered it. His horse and he were both apparently black on one side and gray on the other, from the snow-drift settling to windward. The animal looked tired, but the rider sat as easy as if he were riding to cover. The reins hung loose, and the horse went in a straight line for The Boar's Head, stopping under the archway only when his master drew bridle at the door of the inn.
 
At that moment Miss Letty was standing at the back of Miss Napier's chair, leaning her arms upon it as she talked to her. This was her way of resting as often as occasion arose for a chat with her elder sister. Miss Letty's hair was gathered in a great knot at the top of her head, and little ringlets hung like tendrils down the sides of her face, the benevolence of which was less immediately striking than that of her sister's, because of the constant play of humour upon it, especially about the mouth. If a spirit of satire could be supposed converted into something Christian by an infusion of the tenderest loving-kindness and humanity, remaining still recognizable notwithstanding that all its bitterness was gone, such was the expression of Miss Letty's mouth, It was always half puckered as if in resistance to a comic smile, which showed itself at the windows of the keen gray eyes, however the mouth might be able to keep it within doors. She was neatly dressed in black silk, with a lace collar. Her hands were small and white.
 
The moment the traveller stopped at the door, Miss Napier started.
 
'Letty,' she said, 'wha's that? I could amaist sweir to Black Geordie's fit.'
 
'A' four o' them, I think,' returned Miss Letty, as the horse, notwithstanding, or perhaps in consequence of his fatigue, began to paw and move about on the stones impatiently.
 
The rider had not yet spoken.
 
'He'll be efter some o' 's deevil-ma'-care sculduddery. But jist rin to the door, Letty, or Lizzy 'll be there afore ye, and maybe she wadna be ower ceevil. What can he be efter noo?'
 
'What wad the grew (grayhound) be efter but maukin (hare)?' returned Miss Letty.
 
'Hoot! nonsense! He kens naething aboot her. Gang to the door, lassie.'
 
Miss Letty obeyed.
 
'Wha's there?' she asked, somewhat sharply, as she opened it, 'that neither chaps (knocks) nor ca's?—Preserve 's a'! is't you, my lord?'
 
'Hoo ken ye me, Miss Letty withoot seein' my face?'
 
'A'body at The Boar's Heid kens Black Geordie as weel 's yer lordship's ain sel'. But whaur comes yer lordship frae in sic a nicht as this?'
 
'From Russia. Never dismounted between Moscow and Aberdeen. The ice is bearing to-night.'
 
And the baron laughed inside the upturned collar of his cloak, for he knew that strangely-exaggerated stories were current about his feats in the saddle.
 
'That's a lang ride, my lord, and a sliddery. And what's yer lordship's wull?'
 
'Muckle ye care aboot my lordship to stand jawin' there in a night like this! Is nobody going to take my horse?'
 
'I beg yer lordship's pardon. Caumill!—Yer lordship never said ye wanted yer lordship's horse ta'en. I thocht ye micht be gaein' on to The Bothie.—Tak' Black Geordie here, Caumill.—Come in to the parlour, my lord.'
 
'How d'ye do, Miss Naper?' said Lord Rothie, as he entered the room. 'Here's this jade of a sister of yours asking me why I don't go home to The Bothie, when I choose to stop and water here.'
 
'What'll ye tak', my lord?—Letty, fess the brandy.'
 
'Oh! damn your brandy! Bring me a gill of good Glendronach.'
 
'Rin, Letty. His lordship's cauld.—I canna rise to offer ye the airm-cheir, my lord.'
 
'I can get one for myself, thank heaven!'
 
'Lang may yer lordship return sic thanks.'
 
'For I'm only new begun, ye think, Miss Naper. Well, I don't often trouble heaven with my affairs. By Jove! I ought to be heard when I do.'
 
'Nae doobt ye will, my lord, whan ye seek onything that's fit to be gien ye.'
 
'True. Heaven's gifts are seldom much worth the asking.'
 
'Haud yer tongue, my lord, and dinna bring doon a judgment upo' my hoose, for it wad be missed oot o' Rothieden.'
 
'You're right there, Miss Naper. And here comes the whisky to stop my mouth.'
 
The Baron of Rothie sat for a few minutes with his feet on the fender before Miss Letty's blazing fire, without speaking, while he sipped the whisky neat from a wine-glass. He was a man about the middle height, rather full-figured, muscular and active, with a small head, and an eye whose brightness had not yet been dimmed by the sensuality which might be read in the condition rather than frame of his countenance. But while he spoke so pleasantly to the Miss Napiers, and his forehead spread broad and smooth over the twinkle of his hazel eye, there was a sharp curve on each side of his upper lip, half-way between the corner and the middle, which reminded one of the same curves in the lip of his ancestral boar's head, where it was lifted up by the protruding tusks. These curves disappeared, of course, when he smiled, and his smile, being a lord's, was generally pronounced irresistible. He was good-natured, and nowise inclined to stand upon his rank, so long as he had his own way.
 
'Any customers by the mail to-night, Miss Naper?' he asked, in a careless tone.
 
'Naebody partic'lar, my lord.'
 
'I thought ye never let anybody in that wasn't particularly particular. No foot-passengers—eh?'
 
'Hoot, my lord! that's twa year ago. Gin I had jaloosed him to be a fren' o' yer lordship's, forby bein' a lord himsel', ye ken as weel 's I du that I wadna hae sent him ower the gait to Luckie Happit's, whaur he wadna even be ower sure o' gettin' clean sheets. But gin lords an' lords' sons will walk afit like ither fowk, wha's to ken them frae ither fowk?'
 
'Well, Miss Naper, he was no lord at all. He was nothing but a factor-body doon frae Glenbucket.'
 
'There was sma' hairm dune than, my lord. I'm glaid to hear 't. But what'll yer lordship hae to yer supper?'
 
'I would like a dish o' your chits and nears (sweetbreads and kidneys).'
 
'Noo, think o' that!' returned the landlady, laughing. 'You great fowk wad hae the verra coorse o' natur' turned upside doon to shuit yersels. Wha ever heard o' caure (calves) at this time o' the year?'
 
'Well, anything you like. Who was it came by the mail, did you say?'
 
'I said naebody partic'lar, my lord.'
 
'Well, I'll just go and have a look at Black Geordie.'
 
'Verra weel, my lord.—Letty, rin an' luik efter him; and as sune 's he's roon' the neuk, tell Lizzie no to say a word aboot the leddy. As sure 's deith he's efter her. Whaur cud he hae heard tell o' her?'
 
Lord Rothie came, a moment after, sauntering into the bar-parlour, where Lizzie, the third Miss Napier, a red-haired, round-eyed, white-toothed woman of forty, was making entries in a book.
 
'She's a bonnie lassie that, that came in the coach to-night, they say, Miss Lizzie.'
 
'As ugly 's sin, my lord,' answered Lizzie.
 
'I hae seen some sin 'at was nane sae ugly, Miss Lizzie.'
 
'She wad hae clean scunnert (disgusted) ye, my lord. It's a mercy ye didna see her.'
 
'If she be as ugly as all that, I would just like to see her.'
 
Miss Lizzie saw she had gone too far.
 
'Ow, deed! gin yer lordship wants to see her, ye may see her at yer wull. I s' gang and tell her.'
 
And she rose as if to go.
 
'No, no. Nothing of the sort, Miss Lizzie. Only I heard that she was bonnie, and I wanted to see her. You know I like to look at a pretty girl.'
 
'That's ower weel kent, my lord.'
 
'Well, there's no harm in that, Miss Lizzie.'
 
'There's no harm in that, my lord, though yer lordship says 't.'
 
The facts were that his lordship had been to the county-town, some forty miles off, and Black Geordie had been sent to Hillknow to meet him; for in any weather that would let him sit, he preferred horseback to every other mode of travelling, though he seldom would be followed by a groom. He had posted to Hillknow, and had dined with a friend at the inn. The coach stopping to change horses, he had caught a glimpse of a pretty face, as he thought, from its window, and had hoped to overtake the coach before it reached Rothieden. But stopping to drink another bottle, he had failed; and it was on the merest chance of seeing that pretty face that he stopped at The Boar's Head. In all probability, had the Marquis seen the lady, he would not have thought her at all such a beauty as she appeared in the eyes of Dooble Sanny; nor, I venture to think, had he thought as the shoemaker did, would he yet have dared to address her in other than the words of such respect as he could still feel in the presence of that which was more noble than himself.
 
Whether or not on his visit to the stable he found anything amiss with Black Geordie, I cannot tell, but he now begged Miss Lizzie to have a bedroom prepared for him.
 
It happened to be the evening of Friday, one devoted by some of the townspeople to a symposium. To this, knowing that the talk will throw a glimmer on several matters, I will now introduce my reader, as a spectator through the reversed telescope of my history.
 
A few of the more influential of the inhabitants had grown, rather than formed themselves, into a kind of club, which met weekly at The Boar's Head. Although they had no exclusive right to the room in which they sat, they generally managed to retain exclusive possession of it; for if any supposed objectionable person entered, they always got rid of him, sometimes without his being aware of how they had contrived to make him so uncomfortable. They began to gather about seven o'clock, when it was expected that boiling water would be in readiness for the compound generally called toddy, sometimes punch. As soon as six were assembled, one was always voted into the chair.
 
On the present occasion, Mr. Innes, the school-master, was unanimously elected to that honour. He was a hard-featured, sententious, snuffy individual, of some learning, and great respectability.
 
I omit the political talk with which their intercommunications began; for however interesting at the time is the scaffolding by which existing institutions arise, the poles and beams when gathered again in the builder's yard are scarcely a subject for the artist.
 
The first to lead the way towards matters of nearer personality was William MacGregor, the linen manufacturer, a man who possessed a score of hand-looms or so—half of which, from the advance of cotton and the decline of linen-wear, now stood idle—but who had already a sufficient deposit in the hands of Mr. Thomson the banker—agent, that is, for the county-bank—to secure him against any necessity for taking to cotton shirts himself, which were an abomination and offence unpardonable in his eyes.
 
'Can ye tell me, Mr. Cocker,' he said, 'what mak's Sandy, Lord Rothie, or Wrathy, or what suld he be ca'd?—tak' to The Bothie at a time like this, whan there's neither huntin', nor fishin', nor shutin', nor onything o' the kin' aboot han' to be playacks till him, the bonnie bairn—'cep' it be otters an' sic like?'
 
William was a shrunken old man, with white whiskers and a black wig, a keen black eye, always in search of the ludicrous in other people, and a mouth ever on the move, as if masticating something comical.
 
'You know just as well as I do,' answered Mr. Cocker, the Marquis of Boarshead's factor for the surrounding estate. 'He never was in the way of giving a reason for anything, least of all for his own movements.'
 
'Somebody was sayin' to me,' resumed MacGregor, who, in all probability, invented the story at the moment, 'that the prince took him kissin' ane o' his servan' lasses, and kickit him oot o' Carlton Hoose into the street, and he canna win' ower the disgrace o' 't.'
 
''Deed for the kissin',' said Mr. Thomson, a portly, comfortable-looking man, 'that's neither here nor there, though it micht hae been a duchess or twa; but for the kickin', my word! but Lord Sandy was mair likly to kick oot the prince. Do ye min' hoo he did whan the Markis taxed him wi'—?'
 
'Haud a quaiet sough,' interposed Mr. Cruickshank, the solicitor; 'there's a drap i' the hoose.'
 
This was a phrase well understood by the company, indicating the presence of some one unknown, or unfit to be trusted.
 
As he spoke he looked towards the farther end of the room, which lay in obscurity; for it was a large room, lighted only by the four candles on the table at which the company sat.
 
'Whaur, Mr. Cruickshank?' asked the dominie in a whisper.
 
'There,' answered Sampson Peddie, the bookseller, who seized the opportunity of saying something, and pointed furtively where the solicitor had only looked.
 
A dim figure was descried at a table in the farthest corner of the room, and they proceeded to carry out the plan they generally adopted to get rid of a stranger.
 
'Ye made use o' a curious auld Scots phrase this moment, Mr. Curshank: can ye explain hoo it comes to beir the meanin' that it's weel kent to beir?' said the manufacturer.
 
'Not I, Mr. MacGregor,' answered the solicitor. 'I'm no philologist or antiquarian. Ask the chairman.'
 
'Gentlemen,' responded Mr. Innes, taking a huge pinch of snuff after the word, and then, passing the box to Mr. Cocker, a sip from his glass before he went on: 'the phrase, gentlemen, “a drap i' the hoose,” no doobt refers to an undesirable presence, for ye're weel awaur that it's a most unpleasin' discovery, in winter especially, to find a drop o' water hangin' from yer ceiling; a something, in short, whaur it has no business to be, and is not accordingly looked for, or prepared against.'
 
'It seems to me, Mr. Innes,' said MacGregor, 'that ye hae hit the nail, but no upo' the heid. What mak' ye o' the phrase, no confined to the Scots tongue, I believe, o' an eaves-drapper? The whilk, no doobt, represents a body that hings aboot yer winnock, like a drap hangin' ower abune it frae the eaves—therefore called an eaves drapper. But the sort of whilk we noo speak, are a waur sort a'thegither; for they come to the inside o' yer hoose, o' yer verra chaumer, an' hing oot their lang lugs to hear what ye carena to be hard save by a dooce frien' or twa ower a het tum'ler.'
 
At the same moment the door opened, and a man entered, who was received with unusual welcome.
 
'Bless my sowl!' said the president, rising; 'it's Mr. Lammie!—Come awa', Mr. Lammie. Sit doon; sit doon. Whaur hae ye been this mony a day, like a pelican o' the wilderness?'
 
Mr. Lammie was a large, mild man, with florid cheeks, no whiskers, and a prominent black eye. He was characterized by a certain simple alacrity, a gentle, but outspeaking readiness, which made him a favourite.
 
'I dinna richtly mak' oot wha ye are,' he answered. 'Ye hae unco little licht here! Hoo are ye a', gentlemen? I s' discover ye by degrees, and pay my respecks accordin'.'
 
And he drew a chair to the table.
 
''Deed I wuss ye wad,' returned MacGregor, in a voice pretentiously hushed, but none the less audible. 'There's a drap in yon en' o' the hoose, Mr. Lammie.'
 
'Hoot! never min' the man,' said Lammie, looking round in the direction indicated. 'I s' warran' he cares as little aboot hiz as we care aboot him. There's nae treason noo a-days. I carena wha hears what I say.'
 
'For my pairt,' said Mr. Peddie, 'I canna help wonnerin' gin it cud be oor auld frien' Mr. Faukener.'
 
'Speyk o' the de'il—' said Mr. Lammie.
 
'Hoot! na,' returned Peddie, interrupting. 'He wasna a'thegither the de'il.'
 
'Haud the tongue o' ye,' retorted Lammie. 'Dinna ye ken a proverb whan ye hear 't? De'il hae ye! ye're as sharpset as a missionar'. I was only gaun to say that I'm doobtin' Andrew's deid.'
 
'Ay! ay!' commenced a chorus of questioning.
 
'Mhm!'
 
'Aaay!'
 
'What gars ye think that?'
 
'And sae he's deid!'
 
'He was a great favourite, Anerew!'
 
'Whaur dee'd he?'
 
'Aye some upsettin' though!'
 
'Ay. He was aye to be somebody wi' his tale.'
 
'A gude-hertit crater, but ye cudna lippen till him.'
 
'Speyk nae ill o' the deid. Maybe they'll hear ye, and turn roon' i' their coffins, and that'll whumle you i' your beds,' said MacGregor, with a twinkle in his eye.
 
'Ring the bell for anither tum'ler, Sampson,' said the chairman.
 
'What'll be dune wi' that factory place, noo? It'll be i' the market?'
 
'It's been i' the market for mony a year. But it's no his ava. It belangs to the auld leddy, his mither,' said the weaver.
 
'Why don't you buy it, Mr. MacGregor, and set up a cotton mill? There's not much doing with the linen now,' said Mr. Cocker.
 
'Me!' returned MacGregor, with indignation. 'The Lord forgie ye for mintin' (hinting) at sic a thing, Mr. Cocker! Me tak' to coaton! I wad as sune spin the hair frae Sawtan's hurdies. Short fushionless dirt, that canna grow straucht oot o' the halesome yird, like the bonnie lint-bells, but maun stick itsel' upo' a buss!—set it up! Coorse vulgar stuff, 'at naebody wad weir but loup-coonter lads that wad fain luik like gentlemen by means o' the collars and ruffles—an' a' comin' frae the auld loom! They may weel affoord se'enteen hunner linen to set it aff wi' 'at has naething but coaton inside the breeks o' them.'
 
'But Dr. Wagstaff says it's healthier,' interposed Peddie.
 
'I'll wag a staff till him. De'il a bit o' 't 's healthier! an' that he kens. It's nae sae healthy, an' sae it mak's him mair wark wi' 's poothers an' his drauchts, an' ither stinkin' stuff. Healthier! What neist?'
 
'Somebody tellt me,' said the bookseller, inwardly conscious of offence, ''at hoo Lord Sandy himsel' weirs cotton.'
 
'Ow 'deed, maybe. And he sets mony a worthy example furbye. Hoo mony, can ye tell me, Mr. Peddie, has he pulled doon frae honest, if no frae high estate, and sent oot to seek their livin' as he taucht them? Hoo mony—?'
 
'Hoot, hoot! Mr. MacGregor, his lordship hasn't a cotton shirt in his possession, I'll be bound,' said Mr. Cocker. 'And, besides, you have not to wash his dirty linen—or cotton either.'
 
'That's as muckle as to say, accordin' to Cocker, that I'm no to speik a word against him. But I'll say what I like. He's no my maister,' said MacGregor, who could drink very little without suffering in his temper and manners; and who, besides, had a certain shrewd suspicion as to the person who still sat in the dark end of the room, possibly because the entrance of Mr. Lammie had interrupted the exorcism.
 
The chairman interposed with soothing words; and the whole company, Cocker included, did its best to pacify the manufacturer; for they all knew what would be the penalty if they failed.
 
A good deal of talk followed, and a good deal of whisky was drunk. They were waited upon by Meg, who, without their being aware of it, cast a keen parting glance at them every time she left the room. At length the conversation had turned again to Andrew Falconer's death.
 
'Whaur said ye he dee'd, Mr. Lammie?'
 
'I never said he was deid. I said I was feared 'at he was deid.'
 
'An' what gars ye say that? It micht be o' consequence to hae 't correck,' said the solicitor.
 
'I had a letter frae my auld frien' and his, Dr. Anderson. Ye min' upo' him, Mr. Innes, dunna ye? He's heid o' the medical boord at Calcutta noo. He says naething but that he doobts he's gane. He gaed up the country, and he hasna hard o' him for sae lang. We hae keepit up a correspondence for mony a year noo, Dr. Anderson an' me. He was a relation o' Anerew's, ye ken—a second cousin, or something. He'll be hame or lang, I'm thinkin', wi' a fine pension.'
 
'He winna weir a cotton sark, I'll be boon',' said MacGregor.
 
'What's the auld leddy gaein' to du wi' that lang-leggit oye (grandson) o' hers, Anerew's son?' asked Sampson.
 
'Ow! he'll be gaein' to the college, I'm thinkin'. He's a fine lad, and a clever, they tell me,' said Mr. Thomson.
 
'Indeed, he's all that, and more too,' said the school-master.
 
'There's naething 'ull du but the college noo!' said MacGregor, whom nobody heeded, for fear of again rousing his anger.
 
'Hoo 'ill she manage that, honest woman? She maun hae but little to spare frae the cleedin' o' 'm.'
 
'She's a gude manager, Mistress Faukner. And, ye see, she has the bleachgreen yet.'
 
'She doesna weir cotton sarks,' growled MacGregor. 'Mony's the wob o' mine she's bleached and boucht tu!'
 
Nobody heeding him yet, he began to feel insulted, and broke in upon the conversation with intent.
 
'Ye haena telt 's yet, Cocker,' he said, 'what that maister o' yours is duin' here at this time o' the year. I wad ken that, gin ye please.'
 
'How should I know, Mr. MacGregor?' returned the factor, taking no notice of the offensive manner in which the question was put.
 
'He's no a hair better nor ane o' thae Algerine pirates 'at Lord Exmooth's het the hips o'—and that's my opingon.'
 
'He's nae amo' your feet, MacGregor,' said the banker. 'Ye micht jist lat him lie.'
 
'Gin I had him doon, faith gin I wadna lat him lie! I'll jist tell ye ae thing, gentlemen, that cam' to my knowledge no a hunner year ago. An' it's a' as true 's gospel, though I hae aye held my tongue aboot it till this verra nicht. Ay! ye'll a' hearken noo; but it's no lauchin', though there was sculduddery eneuch, nae doobt, afore it cam' that len'th. And mony a het drap did the puir lassie greet, I can tell ye. Faith! it was no lauchin' to her. She was a servan' o' oors, an' a ticht bonnie lass she was. They ca'd her the weyver's bonny Mary—that's the name she gaed by. Weel, ye see—'
 
MacGregor was interrupted by a sound from the further end of the room. The stranger, whom most of them had by this time forgotten, had risen, and was approaching the table where they sat.
 
'Guid guide us!' interrupted several under their breaths, as all rose, 'it's Lord Sandy himsel'!'
 
'I thank you, gentleman,' he said, with a mixture of irony and contempt, 'for the interest you take in my private history. I should have thought it had been as little to the taste as it is to the honour of some of you to listen to such a farrago of lies.'
 
'Lees! my lord,' said MacGregor, starting to his feet. Mr. Cocker looked dismayed, and Mr. Lammie sheepish—all of them dazed and dumbfoundered, except the old weaver, who, as his lordship turned to leave the room, added:
 
'Lang lugs (ears) suld be made o' leather, my lord, for fear they grow het wi' what they hear.'
 
Lord Rothie turned in a rage. He too had been drinking.
 
'Kick that toad into the street, or, by heaven! it's the last drop any of you drink in this house!' he cried.
 
'The taed may tell the poddock (frog) what the rottan (rat) did i' the taed's hole, my lord,' said MacGregor, whom independence, honesty, bile, and drink combined to render fearless.
 
Lord Sandy left the room without another word. His factor took his hat and followed him. The rest dropped into their seats in silence. Mr. Lammie was the first to speak.
 
'There's a pliskie!' he said.
 
'I cud jist say the word efter auld Simeon,' said MacGregor.
 
'I never thocht to be sae favoured! Eh! but I hae langed, and noo I hae spoken!' with which words he sat down, contented.
 
When Mr. Cocker overtook his master, as MacGregor had not unfitly styled him, he only got a damning for his pains, and went home considerably crestfallen.
 
Lord Rothie returned to the landlady in her parlour.
 
'What's the maitter wi' ye, my lord? What's vexed ye?' asked Miss Napier, with a twinkle in her eyes, for she thought, from the baron's mortification, he must have received some rebuff, and now that the bonnie leddy was safe at Captain Forsyth's, enjoyed the idea of it.
 
'Ye keep an ill-tongued hoose, Miss Naper,' answered his lordship.
 
Miss Napier guessed at the truth at once—that he had overheard some free remarks on his well-known licence of behaviour.
 
'Weel, my lord, I do my best. A body canna keep an inn and speir the carritchis (catechism) at the door o' 't. But I believe ye're i' the richt, my lord, for I heard an awfu' aff-gang o' sweirin' i' the yard, jist afore yer lordship cam' in. An' noo' 'at I think o' 't, it wasna that onlike yer lordship's ain word.'
 
Lord Sandy broke into a loud laugh. He could enjoy a joke against himself when it came from a woman, and was founded on such a trifle as a personal vice.
 
'I think I'll go to bed,' he said when his laugh was over. 'I believe it's the only safe place from your tongue, Miss Naper.'
 
'Letty,' cried Miss Napier, 'fess a can'le, and show his lordship to the reid room.'
 
Till Miss Letty appeared, the baron sat and stretched himself. He then rose and followed her into the archway, and up an outside stair to a door which opened immediately upon a handsome old-fashioned room, where a blazing fire lighted up the red hangings. Miss Letty set down the candle, and bidding his lordship good night, turned and left the room, shutting the door, and locking it behind her—a proceeding of which his lordship took no notice, for, however especially suitable it might be in his case, it was only, from whatever ancient source derived, the custom of the house in regard to this particular room and a corresponding chamber on the opposite side of the archway.
 
Meantime the consternation amongst the members of the club was not so great as not to be talked over, or to prevent the call for more whisky and hot water. All but MacGregor, however, regretted what had occurred. He was so elevated with his victory and a sense of courage and prowess, that he became more and more facetious and overbearing.
 
'It's all very well for you, Mr. MacGregor,' said the dominie, with dignity: 'you have nothing to lose.'
 
'Troth! he canna brak the bank—eh, Mr. Tamson?'
 
'He may give me a hint to make you withdraw your money, though, Mr. MacGregor.'
 
'De'il care gin I do!' returned the weaver. 'I can mak' better o' 't ony day.'
 
'But there's yer hoose an' kailyard,' suggested Peddie.
 
'They're ma ain!—a' ma ain! He canna lay 's finger on onything o' mine but my servan' lass,' cried the weaver, slapping his thigh-bone—for there was little else to slap.
 
Meg, at the moment, was taking her exit-glance. She went straight to Miss Napier.
 
'Willie MacGregor's had eneuch, mem, an' a drappy ower.'
 
'Sen' Caumill doon to Mrs. MacGregor to say wi' my compliments that she wad do weel to sen' for him,' was the response.
 
Meantime he grew more than troublesome. Ever on the outlook, when sober, after the foibles of others, he laid himself open to endless ridicule when in drink, which, to tell the truth, was a rare occurrence. He was in the midst of a prophetic denunciation of the vices of the nobility, and especially of Lord Rothie, when Meg, entering the room, went quietly behind his chair and whispered:
 
'Maister MacGregor, there's a lassie come for ye.'
 
'I'm nae in,' he answered, magnificently.
 
'But it's the mistress 'at's sent for ye. Somebody's wantin' ye.'
 
'Somebody maun want me, than.—As I was sayin', Mr. Cheerman and gentlemen—'
 
'Mistress MacGregor 'll be efter ye hersel', gin ye dinna gang,' said Meg.
 
'Let her come. Duv ye think I'm fleyt at her? De'il a step 'll I gang till I please. Tell her that, Meg.'
 
Meg left the room, with a broad grin on her good-humoured face.
 
'What's the bitch lauchin' at?' exclaimed MacGregor, starting to his feet.
 
The whole company rose likewise, using their endeavour to persuade him to go home.
 
'Duv ye think I'm drunk, sirs? I'll lat ye ken I'm no drunk. I hae a wull o' mine ain yet. Am I to gang hame wi' a lassie to haud me oot o' the gutters? Gin ye daur to alloo that I'm drunk, ye ken hoo ye'll fare, for de'il a fit 'll I gang oot o' this till I hae anither tum'ler.'
 
'I'm thinkin' there's mair o' 's jist want ane mair,' said Peddie.
 
A confirmatory murmur arose as each looked into the bottom of his tumbler, and the bell was instantly rung. But it only brought Meg back with the message that it was time for them all to go home. Every eye turned upon MacGregor reproachfully.
 
'Ye needna luik at me that gait, sirs. I'm no fou,' said he.
 
''Deed no. Naebody taks ye to be,' answered the chairman. 'Meggie, there's naebody's had ower muckle yet, and twa or three o' 's hasna had freely eneuch. Jist gang an' fess a mutchkin mair. An' there'll be a shillin' to yersel', lass.'
 
Meg retired, but straightway returned.
 
'Miss Naper says there's no a drap mair drink to be had i' this hoose the nicht.'
 
'Here, Meggie,' said the chairman, 'there's yer shillin'; and ye jist gang to Miss Lettie, and gie her my compliments, and say that Mr. Lammie's here, and we haena seen him for a lang time. And'—the rest was spoken in a whisper—'I'll sweir to ye, Meggie, the weyver body sanna hae ae drap o' 't.'
 
Meg withdrew once more, and returned.
 
'Miss Letty's compliments, sir, and Miss Naper has the keys, and she's gane till her bed, and we maunna disturb her. And it's time 'at a' honest fowk was in their beds tu. And gin Mr. Lammie wants a bed i' this hoose, he maun gang till 't. An' here's his can'le. Gude nicht to ye a', gentlemen.'
 
So saying, Meg set the lighted candle on the sideboard, and finally vanished. The good-tempered, who formed the greater part of the company, smiled to each other, and emptied the last drops of their toddy first into their glasses, and thence into their mouths. The ill-tempered, numbering but one more than MacGregor, growled and swore a little, the weaver declaring that he would not go home. But the rest walked out and left him, and at last, appalled by the silence, he rose with his wig awry, and trotted—he always trotted when he was tipsy—home to his wife.
 
 
CHAPTER VI. MRS. FALCONER.
 Meantime Robert was seated in the parlour at the little dark mahogany table, in which the lamp, shaded towards his grandmother's side, shone brilliantly reflected. Her face being thus hidden both by the light and the shadow, he could not observe the keen look of stern benevolence with which, knowing that he could not see her, she regarded him as he ate his thick oat-cake of Betty's skilled manufacture, well loaded with the sweetest butter, and drank the tea which she had poured out and sugared for him with liberal hand. It was a comfortable little room, though its inlaid mahogany chairs and ancient sofa, covered with horsehair, had a certain look of hardness, no doubt. A shepherdess and lamb, worked in silks whose brilliance had now faded half-way to neutrality, hung in a black frame, with brass rosettes at the corners, over the chimney-piece—the sole approach to the luxury of art in the homely little place. Besides the muslin stretched across the lower part of the window, it was undefended by curtains. There was no cat in the room, nor was there one in the kitchen even; for Mrs. Falconer had such a respect for humanity that she grudged every morsel consumed by the lower creation. She sat in one of the arm-chairs belonging to the hairy set, leaning back in contemplation of her grandson, as she took her tea.
 
She was a handsome old lady—little, but had once been taller, for she was more than seventy now. She wore a plain cap of muslin, lying close to her face, and bordered a little way from the edge with a broad black ribbon, which went round her face, and then, turning at right angles, went round the back of her neck. Her gray hair peeped a little way from under this cap. A clear but short-sighted eye of a light hazel shone under a smooth thoughtful forehead; a straight and well-elevated, but rather short nose, which left the firm upper lip long and capable of expressing a world of dignified offence, rose over a well-formed mouth, revealing more moral than temperamental sweetness; while the chin was rather deficient than otherwise, and took little share in indicating the remarkable character possessed by the old lady.
 
After gazing at Robert for some time, she took a piece of oat-cake from a plate by her side, the only luxury in which she indulged, for it was made with cream instead of water—it was very little she ate of anything—and held it out to Robert in a hand white, soft, and smooth, but with square finger tips, and squat though pearly nails. 'Ha'e, Robert,' she said; and Robert received it with a 'Thank you, grannie'; but when he thought she did not see him, slipped it under the table and into his pocket. She saw him well enough, however, and although she would not condescend to ask him why he put it away instead of eating it, the endeavour to discover what could have been his reason for so doing cost her two hours of sleep that night. She would always be at the bottom of a thing if reflection could reach it, but she generally declined taking the most ordinary measures to expedite the process.
 
When Robert had finished his tea, instead of rising to get his books and betake himself to his lessons, in regard to which his grandmother had seldom any cause to complain, although she would have considered herself guilty of high treason against the boy's future if she had allowed herself once to acknowledge as much, he drew his chair towards the fire, and said:
 
'Grandmamma!'
 
'He's gaein' to tell me something,' said Mrs. Falconer to herself. 'Will 't be aboot the puir barfut crater they ca' Shargar, or will 't be aboot the piece he pat intil 's pooch?'
 
'Weel, laddie?' she said aloud, willing to encourage him.
 
'Is 't true that my gran'father was the blin' piper o' Portcloddie?'
 
'Ay, laddie; true eneuch. Hoots, na! nae yer grandfather, but yer father's grandfather, laddie—my husband's father.'
 
'Hoo cam that aboot?'
 
'Weel, ye see, he was oot i' the Forty-five; and efter the battle o' Culloden, he had to rin for 't. He wasna wi' his ain clan at the battle, for his father had broucht him to the Lawlands whan he was a lad; but he played the pipes till a reg'ment raised by the Laird o' Portcloddie. And for ooks (weeks) he had to hide amo' the rocks. And they tuik a' his property frae him. It wasna muckle—a wheen hooses, and a kailyard or twa, wi' a bit fairmy on the tap o' a cauld hill near the sea-shore; but it was eneuch and to spare; and whan they tuik it frae him, he had naething left i' the warl' but his sons. Yer grandfather was born the verra day o' the battle, and the verra day 'at the news cam, the mother deed. But yer great grandfather wasna lang or he merried anither wife. He was sic a man as ony woman micht hae been prood to merry. She was the dother (daughter) o' an episcopalian minister, and she keepit a school in Portcloddie. I saw him first mysel' whan I was aboot twenty—that was jist the year afore I was merried. He was a gey (considerably) auld man than, but as straucht as an ellwand, and jist pooerfu' beyon' belief. His shackle-bane (wrist) was as thick as baith mine; and years and years efter that, whan he tuik his son, my husband, and his grandson, my Anerew—'
 
'What ails ye, grannie? What for dinna ye gang on wi' the story?'
 
After a somewhat lengthened pause, Mrs. Falconer resumed as if she had not stopped at all.
 
'Ane in ilka han', jist for the fun o' 't, he kneipit their heids thegither, as gin they hed been twa carldoddies (stalks of ribgrass). But maybe it was the lauchin' o' the twa lads, for they thocht it unco fun. They were maist killed wi' lauchin'. But the last time he did it, the puir auld man hostit (coughed) sair efterhin, and had to gang and lie doon. He didna live lang efter that. But it wasna that 'at killed him, ye ken.'
 
'But hoo cam he to play the pipes?'
 
'He likit the pipes. And yer grandfather, he tuik to the fiddle.'
 
'But what for did they ca' him the blin' piper o' Portcloddie?'
 
'Because he turned blin' lang afore his en' cam, and there was naething ither he cud do. And he wad aye mak an honest baubee whan he cud; for siller was fell scarce at that time o' day amo' the Falconers. Sae he gaed throu the toon at five o'clock ilka mornin' playin' his pipes, to lat them 'at war up ken they war up in time, and them 'at warna, that it was time to rise. And syne he played them again aboot aucht o'clock at nicht, to lat them ken 'at it was time for dacent fowk to gang to their beds. Ye see, there wasna sae mony clocks and watches by half than as there is noo.'
 
'Was he a guid piper, grannie?'
 
'What for speir ye that?'
 
'Because I tauld that sunk, Lumley—'
 
'Ca' naebody names, Robert. But what richt had ye to be speikin' to a man like that?'
 
'He spak to me first.'
 
'Whaur saw ye him?'
 
'At The Boar's Heid.'
 
'And what richt had ye to gang stan'in' aboot? Ye oucht to ha' gane in at ance.'
 
'There was a half-dizzen o' fowk stan'in' aboot, and I bude (behoved) to speik whan I was spoken till.'
 
'But ye budena stop an' mak' ae fule mair.'
 
'Isna that ca'in' names, grannie?'
 
''Deed, laddie, I doobt ye hae me there. But what said the fallow Lumley to ye?'
 
'He cast up to me that my grandfather was naething but a blin' piper.'
 
'And what said ye?'
 
'I daured him to say 'at he didna pipe weel.'
 
'Weel dune, laddie! And ye micht say 't wi' a gude conscience, for he wadna hae been piper till 's regiment at the battle o' Culloden gin he hadna pipit weel. Yon's his kilt hingin' up i' the press i' the garret. Ye'll hae to grow, Robert, my man, afore ye fill that.'
 
'And whase was that blue coat wi' the bonny gowd buttons upo' 't?' asked Robert, who thought he had discovered a new approach to an impregnable hold, which he would gladly storm if he could.
 
'Lat the coat sit. What has that to do wi' the kilt? A blue coat and a tartan kilt gang na weel thegither.'
 
'Excep' in an auld press whaur naebody sees them. Ye wadna care, grannie, wad ye, gin I was to cut aff the bonnie buttons?'
 
'Dinna lay a finger upo' them. Ye wad be gaein' playin' at pitch and toss or ither sic ploys wi' them. Na, na, lat them sit.'
 
'I wad only niffer them for bools (exchange them for marbles).'
 
'I daur ye to touch the coat or onything 'ither that's i' that press.'
 
'Weel, weel, grannie. I s' gang and get my lessons for the morn.'
 
'It's time, laddie. Ye hae been jabberin' ower muckle. Tell Betty to come and tak' awa' the tay-things.'
 
Robert went to the kitchen, got a couple of hot potatoes and a candle, and carried them up-stairs to Shargar, who was fast asleep. But the moment the light shone upon his face, he started up, with his eyes, if not his senses, wide awake.
 
'It wasna me, mither! I tell ye it wasna me!'
 
And he covered his head with both arms, as if to defend it from a shower of blows.
 
'Haud yer tongue, Shargar. It's me.'
 
But before Shargar could come to his senses, the light of the candle falling upon the blue coat made the buttons flash confused suspicions into his mind.
 
'Mither, mither,' he said, 'ye hae gane ower far this time. There's ower mony o' them, and they're no the safe colour. We'll be baith hangt, as sure's there's a deevil in hell.'
 
As he said thus, he went on trying to pick the buttons from the coat, taking them for sovereigns, though how he could have seen a sovereign at that time in Scotland I can only conjecture. But Robert caught him by the shoulders, and shook him awake with no gentle hands, upon which he began to rub his eyes, and mutter sleepily:
 
'Is that you, Bob? I hae been dreamin', I doobt.'
 
'Gin ye dinna learn to dream quaieter, ye'll get you and me tu into mair trouble nor I care to hae aboot ye, ye rascal. Haud the tongue o' ye, and eat this tawtie, gin ye want onything mair. And here's a bit o' reamy cakes tu ye. Ye winna get that in ilka hoose i' the toon. It's my grannie's especial.'
 
Robert felt relieved after this, for he had eaten all the cakes Miss Napier had given him, and had had a pain in his conscience ever since.
 
'Hoo got ye a haud o' 't?' asked Shargar, evidently supposing he had stolen it.
 
'She gies me a bit noo and than.'
 
'And ye didna eat it yersel'? Eh, Bob!'
 
Shargar was somewhat overpowered at this fresh proof of Robert's friendship. But Robert was still more ashamed of what he had not done.
 
He took the blue coat carefully from the bed, and hung it in its place again, satisfied now, from the way his grannie had spoken, or, rather, declined to speak, about it, that it had belonged to his father.
 
'Am I to rise?' asked Shargar, not understanding the action.
 
'Na, na, lie still. Ye'll be warm eneuch wantin' thae sovereigns. I'll lat ye oot i' the mornin' afore grannie's up. And ye maun mak' the best o't efter that till it's dark again. We'll sattle a' aboot it at the schuil the morn. Only we maun be circumspec', ye ken.'
 
'Ye cudna lay yer han's upo' a drap o' whusky, cud ye, Bob?'
 
Robert stared in horror. A boy like that asking for whisky! and in his grandmother's house, too!
 
'Shargar,' he said solemnly, 'there's no a drap o' whusky i' this hoose. It's awfu' to hear ye mention sic a thing. My grannie wad smell the verra name o' 't a mile awa'. I doobt that's her fit upo' the stair a'ready.'
 
Robert crept to the door, and Shargar sat staring with horror, his eyes looking from the gloom of the bed like those of a half-strangled dog. But it was a false alarm, as Robert presently returned to announce.
 
'Gin ever ye sae muckle as mention whusky again, no to say drink ae drap o' 't, you and me pairt company, and that I tell you, Shargar,' said he, emphatically.
 
'I'll never luik at it; I'll never mint at dreamin' o' 't,' answered Shargar, coweringly. 'Gin she pits 't intil my moo', I'll spit it oot. But gin ye strive wi' me, Bob, I'll cut my throat—I will; an' that'll be seen and heard tell o'.'
 
All this time, save during the alarm of Mrs. Falconer's approach, when he sat with a mouthful of hot potato, unable to move his jaws for terror, and the remnant arrested half-way in its progress from his mouth after the bite—all this time Shargar had been devouring the provisions Robert had brought him, as if he had not seen food that day. As soon as they were finished, he begged for a drink of water, which Robert managed to procure for him. He then left him for the night, for his longer absence might have brought his grandmother after him, who had perhaps only too good reasons for being doubtful, if not suspicious, about boys in general, though certainly not about Robert in particular. He carried with him his books from the other garret-room where he kept them, and sat down at the table by his grandmother, preparing his Latin and geography by her lamp, while she sat knitting a white stocking with fingers as rapid as thought, never looking at her work, but staring into the fire, and seeing visions there which Robert would have given everything he could call his own to see, and then would have given his life to blot out of the world if he had seen them. Quietly the evening passed, by the peaceful lamp and the cheerful fire, with the Latin on the one side of the table, and the stocking on the other, as if ripe and purified old age and hopeful unstained youth had been the only extremes of humanity known to the world. But the bitter wind was howling by fits in the chimney, and the offspring of a nobleman and a gipsy lay asleep in the garret, covered with the cloak of an old Highland rebel.
 
At nine o'clock, Mrs. Falconer rang the bell for Betty, and they had worship. Robert read a chapter, and his grandmother prayed an extempore prayer, in which they that looked at the wine when it was red in the cup, and they that worshipped the woman clothed in scarlet and seated upon the seven hills, came in for a strange mixture, in which the vengeance yielded only to the pity.
 
'Lord, lead them to see the error of their ways,' she cried. 'Let the rod of thy wrath awake the worm of their conscience that they may know verily that there is a God that ruleth in the earth. Dinna lat them gang to hell, O Lord, we beseech thee.'
 
As soon as prayers were over, Robert had a tumbler of milk and some more oat-cake, and was sent to bed; after which it was impossible for him to hold any further communication with Shargar. For his grandmother, little as one might suspect it who entered the parlour in the daytime, always slept in that same room, in a bed closed in with doors like those of a large press in the wall, while Robert slept in a little closet, looking into a garden at the back of the house, the door of which opened from the parlour close to the head of his grandmother's bed. It was just large enough to hold a good-sized bed with curtains, a chest of drawers, a bureau, a large eight-day clock, and one chair, leaving in the centre about five feet square for him to move about in. There was more room as well as more comfort in the bed. He was never allowed a candle, for light enough came through from the parlour, his grandmother thought; so he was soon extended between the whitest of cold sheets, with his knees up to his chin, and his thoughts following his lost father over all spaces of the earth with which his geography-book had made him acquainted.
 
He was in the habit of leaving his closet and creeping through his grandmother's room before she was awake—or at least before she had given any signs to the small household that she was restored to consciousness, and that the life of the house must proceed. He therefore found no difficulty in liberating Shargar from his prison, except what arose from the boy's own unwillingness to forsake his comfortable quarters for the fierce encounter of the January blast which awaited him. But Robert did not turn him out before the last moment of safety had arrived; for, by the aid of signs known to himself, he watched the progress of his grandmother's dressing—an operation which did not consume much of the morning, scrupulous as she was with regard to neatness and cleanliness—until Betty was called in to give her careful assistance to the final disposition of the mutch, when Shargar's exit could be delayed no longer. Then he mounted to the foot of the second stair, and called in a keen whisper,
 
'Noo, Shargar, cut for the life o' ye.'
 
And down came the poor fellow, with long gliding steps, ragged and reluctant, and, without a word or a look, launched himself out into the cold, and sped away he knew not whither. As he left the door, the only suspicion of light was the dull and doubtful shimmer of the snow that covered the street, keen particles of which were blown in his face by the wind, which, having been up all night, had grown very cold, and seemed delighted to find one unprotected human being whom it might badger at its own bitter will. Outcast Shargar! Where he spent the interval between Mrs. Falconer's door and that of the school, I do not know. There was a report amongst his school-fellows that he had been found by Scroggie, the fish-cadger, lying at full length upon the back of his old horse, which, either from compassion or indifference, had not cared to rise up under the burden. They said likewise that, when accused by Scroggie of housebreaking, though nothing had to be broken to get in, only a string with a peculiar knot, on the invention of which the cadger prided himself, to be undone, all that Shargar had to say in his self-defence was, that he had a terrible sair wame, and that the horse was warmer nor the stanes i' the yard; and he had dune him nae ill, nae even drawn a hair frae his tail—which would have been a difficult feat, seeing the horse's tail was as bare as his hoof.
CHAPTER VII. ROBERT TO THE RESCUE!
 That Shargar was a parish scholar—which means that the parish paid his fees, although, indeed, they were hardly worth paying—made very little difference to his position amongst his school-fellows. Nor did the fact of his being ragged and dirty affect his social reception to his discomfort. But the accumulated facts of the oddity of his personal appearance, his supposed imbecility, and the bad character borne by his mother, placed him in a very unenviable relation to the tyrannical and vulgar-minded amongst them. Concerning his person, he was long, and, as his name implied, lean, with pale-red hair, reddish eyes, no visible eyebrows or eyelashes, and very pale face—in fact, he was half-way to an Albino. His arms and legs seemed of equal length, both exceedingly long. The handsomeness of his mother appeared only in his nose and mouth, which were regular and good, though expressionless; and the birth of his father only in his small delicate hands and feet, of which any girl who cared only for smallness, and heeded neither character nor strength, might have been proud. His feet, however, were supposed to be enormous, from the difficulty with which he dragged after him the huge shoes in which in winter they were generally encased.
 
The imbecility, like the large feet, was only imputed. He certainly was not brilliant, but neither did he make a fool of himself in any of the few branches of learning of which the parish-scholar came in for a share. That which gained him the imputation was the fact that his nature was without a particle of the aggressive, and all its defensive of as purely negative a character as was possible. Had he been a dog, he would never have thought of doing anything for his own protection beyond turning up his four legs in silent appeal to the mercy of the heavens. He was an absolute sepulchre in the swallowing of oppression and ill-usage. It vanished in him. There was no echo of complaint, no murmur of resentment from the hollows of that soul. The blows that fell upon him resounded not, and no one but God remembered them.
 
His mother made her living as she herself best knew, with occasional well-begrudged assistance from the parish. Her chief resource was no doubt begging from house to house for the handful of oatmeal which was the recognized, and, in the court of custom-taught conscience, the legalized dole upon which every beggar had a claim; and if she picked up at the same time a chicken, or a boy's rabbit, or any other stray luxury, she was only following the general rule of society, that your first duty is to take care of yourself. She was generally regarded as a gipsy, but I doubt if she had any gipsy blood in her veins. She was simply a tramper, with occasional fits of localization. Her worst fault was the way she treated her son, whom she starved apparently that she might continue able to beat him.
 
The particular occasion which led to the recognition of the growing relation between Robert and Shargar was the following. Upon a certain Saturday—some sidereal power inimical to boys must have been in the ascendant—a Saturday of brilliant but intermittent sunshine, the white clouds seen from the school windows indicating by their rapid transit across those fields of vision that fresh breezes friendly to kites, or draigons, as they were called at Rothieden, were frolicking in the upper regions—nearly a dozen boys were kept in for not being able to pay down from memory the usual instalment of Shorter Catechism always due at the close of the week. Amongst these boys were Robert and Shargar. Sky-revealing windows and locked door were too painful; and in proportion as the feeling of having nothing to do increased, the more uneasy did the active element in the boys become, and the more ready to break out into some abnormal manifestation. Everything—sun, wind, clouds—was busy out of doors, and calling to them to come and join the fun; and activity at the same moment excited and restrained naturally turns to mischief. Most of them had already learned the obnoxious task—one quarter of an hour was enough for that—and now what should they do next? The eyes of three or four of the eldest of them fell simultaneously upon Shargar.
 
Robert was sitting plunged in one of his day-dreams, for he, too, had learned his catechism, when he was roused from his reverie by a question from a pale-faced little boy, who looked up to him as a great authority.
 
'What for 's 't ca'd the Shorter Carritchis, Bob?'
 
''Cause it's no fully sae lang's the Bible,' answered Robert, without giving the question the consideration due to it, and was proceeding to turn the matter over in his mind, when the mental process was arrested by a shout of laughter. The other boys had tied Shargar's feet to the desk at which he sat—likewise his hands, at full stretch; then, having attached about a dozen strings to as many elf-locks of his pale-red hair, which was never cut or trimmed, had tied them to various pegs in the wall behind him, so that the poor fellow could not stir. They were now crushing up pieces of waste-paper, not a few leaves of stray school-books being regarded in that light, into bullets, dipping them in ink and aiming them at Shargar's face.
 
For some time Shargar did not utter a word; and Robert, although somewhat indignant at the treatment he was receiving, felt as yet no impulse to interfere, for success was doubtful. But, indeed, he was not very easily roused to action of any kind; for he was as yet mostly in the larva-condition of character, when everything is transacted inside. But the fun grew more furious, and spot after spot of ink gloomed upon Shargar's white face. Still Robert took no notice, for they did not seem to be hurting him much. But when he saw the tears stealing down his patient cheeks, making channels through the ink which now nearly covered them, he could bear it no longer. He took out his knife, and under pretence of joining in the sport, drew near to Shargar, and with rapid hand cut the cords—all but those that bound his feet, which were less easy to reach without exposing himself defenceless.
 
The boys of course turned upon Robert. But ere they came to more than abusive words a diversion took place.
 
Mrs. Innes, the school-master's wife—a stout, kind-hearted woman, the fine condition of whose temperament was clearly the result of her physical prosperity—appeared at the door which led to the dwelling-house above, bearing in her hands a huge tureen of potato-soup, for her motherly heart could not longer endure the thought of dinnerless boys. Her husband being engaged at a parish meeting, she had a chance of interfering with success.
 
But ere Nancy, the servant, could follow with the spoons and plates, Wattie Morrison had taken the tureen, and out of spite at Robert, had emptied its contents on the head of Shargar, who was still tied by the feet, with the words: 'Shargar, I anoint thee king over us, and here is thy crown,' giving the tureen, as he said so, a push on to his head, where it remained.
 
Shargar did not move, and for one moment could not speak, but the next he gave a shriek that made Robert think he was far worse scalded than turned out to be the case. He darted to him in rage, took the tureen from his head, and, his blood being fairly up now, flung it with all his force at Morrison, and felled him to the earth. At the same moment the master entered by the street door and his wife by the house door, which was directly opposite. In the middle of the room the prisoners surrounded the fallen tyrant—Robert, with the red face of wrath, and Shargar, with a complexion the mingled result of tears, ink, and soup, which latter clothed him from head to foot besides, standing on the outskirts of the group. I need not follow the story farther. Both Robert and Morrison got a lickin'; and if Mr. Innes had been like some school-masters of those times, Shargar would not have escaped his share of the evil things going.
 
From that day Robert assumed the acknowledged position of Shargar's defender. And if there was pride and a sense of propriety mingled with his advocacy of Shargar's rights, nay, even if the relation was not altogether free from some amount of show-off on Robert's part, I cannot yet help thinking that it had its share in that development of the character of Falconer which has chiefly attracted me to the office of his biographer. There may have been in it the exercise of some patronage; probably it was not pure from the pride of beneficence; but at least it was a loving patronage and a vigorous beneficence; and, under the reaction of these, the good which in Robert's nature was as yet only in a state of solution, began to crystallize into character.
 
But the effect of the new relation was far more remarkable on Shargar. As incapable of self-defence as ever, he was yet in a moment roused to fury by any attack upon the person or the dignity of Robert: so that, indeed, it became a new and favourite mode of teasing Shargar to heap abuse, real or pretended, upon his friend. From the day when Robert thus espoused his part, Shargar was Robert's dog. That very evening, when she went to take a parting peep at the external before locking the door for the night, Betty found him sitting upon the door-step, only, however, to send him off, as she described it, 'wi' a flech 1 in 's lug (a flea in his ear).' For the character of the mother was always associated with the boy, and avenged upon him. I must, however, allow that those delicate, dirty fingers of his could not with safety be warranted from occasional picking and stealing.
 
At this period of my story, Robert himself was rather a grotesque-looking animal, very tall and lanky, with especially long arms, which excess of length they retained after he was full-grown. In this respect Shargar and he were alike; but the long legs of Shargar were unmatched in Robert, for at this time his body was peculiarly long. He had large black eyes, deep sunk even then, and a Roman nose, the size of which in a boy of his years looked portentous. For the rest, he was dark-complexioned, with dark hair, destined to grow darker still, with hands and feet well modelled, but which would have made four feet and four hands such as Shargar's.
 
When his mind was not oppressed with the consideration of any important metaphysical question, he learned his lessons well; when such was present, the Latin grammar, with all its attendant servilities, was driven from the presence of the lordly need. That once satisfied in spite of pandies and imprisonments, he returned with fresh zest, and, indeed, with some ephemeral ardour, to the rules of syntax or prosody, though the latter, in the mode in which it was then and there taught, was almost as useless as the task set himself by a worthy lay-preacher in the neighbourhood—of learning the first nine chapters of the first Book of the Chronicles, in atonement for having, in an evil hour of freedom of spirit, ventured to suggest that such lists of names, even although forming a portion of Holy Writ, could scarcely be reckoned of equally divine authority with St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ANGEL UNAWARES.
 Although Betty seemed to hold little communication with the outer world, she yet contrived somehow or other to bring home what gossip was going to the ears of her mistress, who had very few visitors; for, while her neighbours held Mrs. Falconer in great and evident respect, she was not the sort of person to sit down and have a news with. There was a certain sedate self-contained dignity about her which the common mind felt to be chilling and repellant; and from any gossip of a personal nature—what Betty brought her always excepted—she would turn away, generally with the words, 'Hoots! I canna bide clashes.'
 
On the evening following that of Shargar's introduction to Mrs. Falconer's house, Betty came home from the butcher's—for it was Saturday night, and she had gone to fetch the beef for their Sunday's broth—with the news that the people next door, that is, round the corner in the next street, had a visitor.
 
The house in question had been built by Robert's father, and was, compared with Mrs. Falconer's one-storey house, large and handsome. Robert had been born, and had spent a few years of his life in it, but could recall nothing of the facts of those early days. Some time before the period at which my history commences it had passed into other hands, and it was now quite strange to him. It had been bought by a retired naval officer, who lived in it with his wife—the only Englishwoman in the place, until the arrival, at The Boar's Head, of the lady so much admired by Dooble Sanny.
 
Robert was up-stairs when Betty emptied her news-bag, and so heard nothing of this bit of gossip. He had just assured Shargar that as soon as his grandmother was asleep he would look about for what he could find, and carry it up to him in the garret. As yet he had confined the expenditure out of Shargar's shilling to twopence.
 
The household always retired early—earlier on Saturday night in preparation for the Sabbath—and by ten o'clock grannie and Betty were in bed. Robert, indeed, was in bed too; but he had lain down in his clothes, waiting for such time as might afford reasonable hope of his grandmother being asleep, when he might both ease Shargar's hunger and get to sleep himself. Several times he got up, resolved to make his attempt; but as often his courage failed and he lay down again, sure that grannie could not be asleep yet. When the clock beside him struck eleven, he could bear it no longer, and finally rose to do his endeavour.
 
Opening the door of the closet slowly and softly, he crept upon his hands and knees into the middle of the parlour, feeling very much like a thief, as, indeed, in a measure he was, though from a blameless motive. But just as he had accomplished half the distance to the door, he was arrested and fixed with terror; for a deep sigh came from grannie's bed, followed by the voice of words. He thought at first that she had heard him, but he soon found that he was mistaken. Still, the fear of discovery held him there on all fours, like a chained animal. A dull red gleam, faint and dull, from the embers of the fire, was the sole light in the room. Everything so common to his eyes in the daylight seemed now strange and eerie in the dying coals, and at what was to the boy the unearthly hour of the night.
 
He felt that he ought not to listen to grannie, but terror made him unable to move.
 
'Och hone! och hone!' said grannie from the bed. 'I've a sair, sair hert. I've a sair hert i' my breist, O Lord! thoo knowest. My ain Anerew! To think o' my bairnie that I cairriet i' my ain body, that sookit my breists, and leuch i' my face—to think o' 'im bein' a reprobate! O Lord! cudna he be eleckit yet? Is there nae turnin' o' thy decrees? Na, na; that wadna do at a'. But while there's life there's houp. But wha kens whether he be alive or no? Naebody can tell. Glaidly wad I luik upon 's deid face gin I cud believe that his sowl wasna amang the lost. But eh! the torments o' that place! and the reik that gangs up for ever an' ever, smorin' (smothering) the stars! And my Anerew doon i' the hert o' 't cryin'! And me no able to win till him! O Lord! I canna say thy will be done. But dinna lay 't to my chairge; for gin ye was a mither yersel' ye wadna pit him there. O Lord! I'm verra ill-fashioned. I beg yer pardon. I'm near oot o' my min'. Forgie me, O Lord! for I hardly ken what I'm sayin'. He was my ain babe, my ain Anerew, and ye gae him to me yersel'. And noo he's for the finger o' scorn to pint at; an ootcast an' a wan'erer frae his ain country, an' daurna come within sicht o' 't for them 'at wad tak' the law o' 'm. An' it's a' drink—drink an' ill company! He wad hae dune weel eneuch gin they wad only hae latten him be. What for maun men be aye drink-drinkin' at something or ither? I never want it. Eh! gin I war as young as whan he was born, I wad be up an' awa' this verra nicht to luik for him. But it's no use me tryin' 't. O God! ance mair I pray thee to turn him frae the error o' 's ways afore he goes hence an' isna more. And O dinna lat Robert gang efter him, as he's like eneuch to do. Gie me grace to haud him ticht, that he may be to the praise o' thy glory for ever an' ever. Amen.'
 
Whether it was that the weary woman here fell asleep, or that she was too exhausted for further speech, Robert heard no more, though he remained there frozen with horror for some minutes after his grandmother had ceased. This, then, was the reason why she would never speak about his father! She kept all her thoughts about him for the silence of the night, and loneliness with the God who never sleeps, but watches the wicked all through the dark. And his father was one of the wicked! And God was against him! And when he died he would go to hell! But he was not dead yet: Robert was sure of that. And when he grew a man, he would go and seek him, and beg him on his knees to repent and come back to God, who would forgive him then, and take him to heaven when he died. And there he would be good, and good people would love him.
 
Something like this passed through the boy's mind ere he moved to creep from the room, for his was one of those natures which are active in the generation of hope. He had almost forgotten what he came there for; and had it not been that he had promised Shargar, he would have crept back to his bed and left him to bear his hunger as best he could. But now, first his right hand, then his left knee, like any other quadruped, he crawled to the door, rose only to his knees to open it, took almost a minute to the operation, then dropped and crawled again, till he had passed out, turned, and drawn the door to, leaving it slightly ajar. Then it struck him awfully that the same terrible passage must be gone through again. But he rose to his feet, for he had no shoes on, and there was little danger of making any noise, although it was pitch dark—he knew the house so well. With gathering courage, he felt his way to the kitchen, and there groped about; but he could find nothing beyond a few quarters of oat-cake, which, with a mug of water, he proceeded to carry up to Shargar in the garret.
 
When he reached the kitchen door, he was struck with amazement and for a moment with fresh fear. A light was shining into the transe from the stair which went up at right angles from the end of it. He knew it could not be grannie, and he heard Betty snoring in her own den, which opened from the kitchen. He thought it must be Shargar who had grown impatient; but how he had got hold of a light he could not think. As soon as he turned the corner, however, the doubt was changed into mystery. At the top of the broad low stair stood a woman-form with a candle in her hand, gazing about her as if wondering which way to go. The light fell full upon her face, the beauty of which was such that, with her dress, which was white—being, in fact, a nightgown—and her hair, which was hanging loose about her shoulders and down to her waist, it led Robert at once to the conclusion (his reasoning faculties already shaken by the events of the night) that she was an angel come down to comfort his grannie; and he kneeled involuntarily at the foot of the stair, and gazed up at her, with the cakes in one hand, and the mug of water in the other, like a meat-and-drink offering. Whether he had closed his eyes or bowed his head, he could not say; but he became suddenly aware that the angel had vanished—he knew not when, how, or whither. This for a time confirmed his assurance that it was an angel. And although he was undeceived before long, the impression made upon him that night was never effaced. But, indeed, whatever Falconer heard or saw was something more to him than it would have been to anybody else.
 
Elated, though awed, by the vision, he felt his way up the stair in the new darkness, as if walking in a holy dream, trod as if upon sacred ground as he crossed the landing where the angel had stood—went up and up, and found Shargar wide awake with expectant hunger. He, too, had caught a glimmer of the light. But Robert did not tell him what he had seen. That was too sacred a subject to enter upon with Shargar, and he was intent enough upon his supper not to be inquisitive.
 
Robert left him to finish it at his leisure, and returned to cross his grandmother's room once more, half expecting to find the angel standing by her bedside. But all was dark and still. Creeping back as he had come, he heard her quiet, though deep, breathing, and his mind was at ease about her for the night. What if the angel he had surprised had only come to appear to grannie in her sleep? Why not? There were such stories in the Bible, and grannie was certainly as good as some of the people in the Bible that saw angels—Sarah, for instance. And if the angels came to see grannie, why should they not have some care over his father as well? It might be—who could tell?
 
It is perhaps necessary to explain Robert's vision. The angel was the owner of the boxes he had seen at The Boar's Head. Looking around her room before going to bed, she had seen a trap in the floor near the wall, and raising it, had discovered a few steps of a stair leading down to a door. Curiosity naturally led her to examine it. The key was in the lock. It opened outwards, and there she found herself, to her surprise, in the heart of another dwelling, of lowlier aspect. She never saw Robert; for while he approached with shoeless feet, she had been glancing through the open door of the gable-room, and when he knelt, the light which she held in her hand had, I presume, hidden him from her. He, on his part, had not observed that the moveless door stood open at last.
 
I have already said that the house adjoining had been built by Robert's father. The lady's room was that which he had occupied with his wife, and in it Robert had been born. The door, with its trap-stair, was a natural invention for uniting the levels of the two houses, and a desirable one in not a few of the forms which the weather assumed in that region. When the larger house passed into other hands, it had never entered the minds of the simple people who occupied the contiguous dwellings, to build up the doorway between.
 
 
CHAPTER IX. A DISCOVERY.
 The friendship of Robert had gained Shargar the favourable notice of others of the school-public. These were chiefly of those who came from the country, ready to follow an example set them by a town boy. When his desertion was known, moved both by their compassion for him, and their respect for Robert, they began to give him some portion of the dinner they brought with them; and never in his life had Shargar fared so well as for the first week after he had been cast upon the world. But in proportion as their interest faded with the novelty, so their appetites reasserted former claims of use and wont, and Shargar began once more to feel the pangs of hunger. For all that Robert could manage to procure for him without attracting the attention he was so anxious to avoid, was little more than sufficient to keep his hunger alive, Shargar being gifted with a great appetite, and Robert having no allowance of pocket-money from his grandmother. The threepence he had been able to spend on him were what remained of sixpence Mr. Innes had given him for an exercise which he wrote in blank verse instead of in prose—an achievement of which the school-master was proud, both from his reverence for Milton, and from his inability to compose a metrical line himself. And how and when he should ever possess another penny was even unimaginable. Shargar's shilling was likewise spent. So Robert could but go on pocketing instead of eating all that he dared, watching anxiously for opportunity of evading the eyes of his grandmother. On her dimness of sight, however, he depended too confidently after all; for either she was not so blind as he thought she was, or she made up for the defect of her vision by the keenness of her observation. She saw enough to cause her considerable annoyance, though it suggested nothing inconsistent with rectitude on the part of the boy, further than that there was something underhand going on. One supposition after another arose in the old lady's brain, and one after another was dismissed as improbable. First, she tried to persuade herself that he wanted to take the provisions to school with him, and eat them there—a proceeding of which she certainly did not approve, but for the reproof of which she was unwilling to betray the loopholes of her eyes. Next she concluded, for half a day, that he must have a pair of rabbits hidden away in some nook or other—possibly in the little strip of garden belonging to the house. And so conjecture followed conjecture for a whole week, during which, strange to say, not even Betty knew that Shargar slept in the house. For so careful and watchful were the two boys, that although she could not help suspecting something from the expression and behaviour of Robert, what that something might be she could not imagine; nor had she and her mistress as yet exchanged confidences on the subject. Her observation coincided with that of her mistress as to the disappearance of odds and ends of eatables—potatoes, cold porridge, bits of oat-cake; and even, on one occasion, when Shargar happened to be especially ravenous, a yellow, or cured and half-dried, haddock, which the lad devoured raw, vanished from her domain. He went to school in the morning smelling so strong in consequence, that they told him he must have been passing the night in Scroggie's cart, and not on his horse's back this time.
 
The boys kept their secret well.
 
One evening, towards the end of the week, Robert, after seeing Shargar disposed of for the night, proceeded to carry out a project which had grown in his brain within the last two days in consequence of an occurrence with which his relation to Shargar had had something to do. It was this:
 
The housing of Shargar in the garret had led Robert to make a close acquaintance with the place. He was familiar with all the outs and ins of the little room which he considered his own, for that was a civilized, being a plastered, ceiled, and comparatively well-lighted little room, but not with the other, which was three times its size, very badly lighted, and showing the naked couples from roof-tree to floor. Besides, it contained no end of dark corners, with which his childish imagination had associated undefined horrors, assuming now one shape, now another. Also there were several closets in it, constructed in the angles of the place, and several chests—two of which he had ventured to peep into. But although he had found them filled, not with bones, as he had expected, but one with papers, and one with garments, he had yet dared to carry his researches no further. One evening, however, when Betty was out, and he had got hold of her candle, and gone up to keep Shargar company for a few minutes, a sudden impulse seized him to have a peep into all the closets. One of them he knew a little about, as containing, amongst other things, his father's coat with the gilt buttons, and his great-grandfather's kilt, as well as other garments useful to Shargar: now he would see what was in the rest. He did not find anything very interesting, however, till he arrived at the last. Out of it he drew a long queer-shaped box into the light of Betty's dip.
 
'Luik here, Shargar!' he said under his breath, for they never dared to speak aloud in these precincts—'luik here! What can there be in this box? Is't a bairnie's coffin, duv ye think? Luik at it.'
 
In this case Shargar, having roamed the country a good deal more than Robert, and having been present at some merry-makings with his mother, of which there were comparatively few in that country-side, was better informed than his friend.
 
'Eh! Bob, duvna ye ken what that is? I thocht ye kent a' thing. That's a fiddle.'
 
'That's buff an' styte (stuff and nonsense), Shargar. Do ye think I dinna ken a fiddle whan I see ane, wi' its guts ootside o' 'ts wame, an' the thoomacks to screw them up wi' an' gar't skirl?'
 
'Buff an' styte yersel'!' cried Shargar, in indignation, from the bed. 'Gie's a haud o' 't.'
 
Robert handed him the case. Shargar undid the hooks in a moment, and revealed the creature lying in its shell like a boiled bivalve.
 
'I tellt ye sae!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'Maybe ye'll lippen to me (trust me) neist time.'
 
'An' I tellt you,' retorted Robert, with an equivocation altogether unworthy of his growing honesty. 'I was cocksure that cudna be a fiddle. There's the fiddle i' the hert o' 't! Losh! I min' noo. It maun be my grandfather's fiddle 'at I hae heard tell o'.'
 
'No to ken a fiddle-case!' reflected Shargar, with as much of contempt as it was possible for him to show.
 
'I tell ye what, Shargar,' returned Robert, indignantly; 'ye may ken the box o' a fiddle better nor I do, but de'il hae me gin I dinna ken the fiddle itsel' raither better nor ye do in a fortnicht frae this time. I s' tak' it to Dooble Sanny; he can play the fiddle fine. An' I'll play 't too, or the de'il s' be in't.'
 
'Eh, man, that 'll be gran'!' cried Shargar, incapable of jealousy. 'We can gang to a' the markets thegither and gaither baubees (halfpence).'
 
To this anticipation Robert returned no reply, for, hearing Betty come in, he judged it time to restore the violin to its case, and Betty's candle to the kitchen, lest she should invade the upper regions in search of it. But that very night he managed to have an interview with Dooble Sanny, the shoemaker, and it was arranged between them that Robert should bring his violin on the evening at which my story has now arrived.
 
Whatever motive he had for seeking to commence the study of music, it holds even in more important matters that, if the thing pursued be good, there is a hope of the pursuit purifying the motive. And Robert no sooner heard the fiddle utter a few mournful sounds in the hands of the soutar, who was no contemptible performer, than he longed to establish such a relation between himself and the strange instrument, that, dumb and deaf as it had been to him hitherto, it would respond to his touch also, and tell him the secrets of its queerly-twisted skull, full of sweet sounds instead of brains. From that moment he would be a musician for music's own sake, and forgot utterly what had appeared to him, though I doubt if it was, the sole motive of his desire to learn—namely, the necessity of retaining his superiority over Shargar.
 
What added considerably to the excitement of his feelings on the occasion, was the expression of reverence, almost of awe, with which the shoemaker took the instrument from its case, and the tenderness with which he handled it. The fact was that he had not had a violin in his hands for nearly a year, having been compelled to pawn his own in order to alleviate the sickness brought on his wife by his own ill-treatment of her, once that he came home drunk from a wedding. It was strange to think that such dirty hands should be able to bring such sounds out of the instrument the moment he got it safely cuddled under his cheek. So dirty were they, that it was said Dooble Sanny never required to carry any rosin with him for fiddler's need, his own fingers having always enough upon them for one bow at least. Yet the points of those fingers never lost the delicacy of their touch. Some people thought this was in virtue of their being washed only once a week—a custom Alexander justified on the ground that, in a trade like his, it was of no use to wash oftener, for he would be just as dirty again before night.
 
The moment he began to play, the face of the soutar grew ecstatic. He stopped at the very first note, notwithstanding, let fall his arms, the one with the bow, the other with the violin, at his sides, and said, with a deep-drawn respiration and lengthened utterance:
 
'Eh!'
 
Then after a pause, during which he stood motionless:
 
'The crater maun be a Cry Moany! Hear till her!' he added, drawing another long note.
 
Then, after another pause:
 
'She's a Straddle Vawrious at least! Hear till her. I never had sic a combination o' timmer and catgut atween my cleuks (claws) afore.'
 
As to its being a Stradivarius, or even a Cremona at all, the testimony of Dooble Sanny was not worth much on the point. But the shoemaker's admiration roused in the boy's mind a reverence for the individual instrument which he never lost.
 
From that day the two were friends.
 
Suddenly the soutar started off at full speed in a strathspey, which was soon lost in the wail of a Highland psalm-tune, giving place in its turn to 'Sic a wife as Willie had!' And on he went without pause, till Robert dared not stop any longer. The fiddle had bewitched the fiddler.
 
'Come as aften 's ye like, Robert, gin ye fess this leddy wi' ye,' said the soutar.
 
And he stroked the back of the violin tenderly with his open palm.
 
'But wad ye hae ony objection to lat it lie aside ye, and lat me come whan I can?'
 
'Objection, laddie? I wad as sune objeck to lattin' my ain wife lie aside me.'
 
'Ay,' said Robert, seized with some anxiety about the violin as he remembered the fate of the wife, 'but ye ken Elspet comes aff a' the waur sometimes.'
 
Softened by the proximity of the wonderful violin, and stung afresh by the boy's words as his conscience had often stung him before, for he loved his wife dearly save when the demon of drink possessed him, the tears rose in Elshender's eyes. He held out the violin to Robert, saying, with unsteady voice:
 
'Hae, tak her awa'. I dinna deserve to hae sic a thing i' my hoose. But hear me, Robert, and lat hearin' be believin'. I never was sae drunk but I cud tune my fiddle. Mair by token, ance they fand me lyin' o' my back i' the Corrie, an' the watter, they say, was ower a' but the mou' o' me; but I was haudin' my fiddle up abune my heid, and de'il a spark o' watter was upo' her.'
 
'It's a pity yer wife wasna yer fiddle, than, Sanny,' said Robert, with more presumption than wit.
 
''Deed ye're i' the richt, there, Robert. Hae, tak' yer fiddle.'
 
''Deed no,' returned Robert. 'I maun jist lippen (trust) to ye, Sanders. I canna bide langer the nicht; but maybe ye'll tell me hoo to haud her the neist time 'at I come—will ye?'
 
'That I wull, Robert, come whan ye like. An' gin ye come o' ane 'at cud play this fiddle as this fiddle deserves to be playt, ye'll do me credit.'
 
'Ye min' what that sumph Lumley said to me the ither nicht, Sanders, aboot my grandfather?'
 
'Ay, weel eneuch. A dish o' drucken havers!'
 
'It was true eneuch aboot my great-grandfather, though.'
 
'No! Was't railly?'
 
'Ay. He was the best piper in 's regiment at Culloden. Gin they had a' fouchten as he pipit, there wad hae been anither tale to tell. And he was toon-piper forby, jist like you, Sanders, efter they took frae him a' 'at he had.'
 
'Na! heard ye ever the like o' that! Weel, wha wad hae thocht it? Faith! we maun hae you fiddle as weel as yer lucky-daiddy pipit.—But here's the King o' Bashan comin' efter his butes, an' them no half dune yet!' exclaimed Dooble Sanny, settling in haste to his awl and his lingel (Fr. ligneul). 'He'll be roarin' mair like a bull o' the country than the king o' 't.'
 
As Robert departed, Peter Ogg came in, and as he passed the window, he heard the shoemaker averring:
 
'I haena risen frae my stule sin' ane o'clock; but there's a sicht to be dune to them, Mr. Ogg.'
 
Indeed, Alexander ab Alexandro, as Mr. Innes facetiously styled him, was in more ways than one worthy of the name of Dooble. There seemed to be two natures in the man, which all his music had not yet been able to blend.
CHAPTER X. ANOTHER DISCOVERY IN THE GARRET.
 Little did Robert dream of the reception that awaited him at home. Almost as soon as he had left the house, the following events began to take place.
 
The mistress's bell rang, and Betty 'gaed benn the hoose to see what she cud be wantin',' whereupon a conversation ensued.
 
'Wha was that at the door, Betty?' asked Mrs. Falconer; for Robert had not shut the door so carefully as he ought, seeing that the deafness of his grandmother was of much the same faculty as her blindness.
 
Had Robert not had a hold of Betty by the forelock of her years, he would have been unable to steal any liberty at all. Still Betty had a conscience, and although she would not offend Robert if she could help it, yet she would not lie.
 
''Deed, mem, I canna jist distinckly say 'at I heard the door,' she answered.
 
'Whaur's Robert?' was her next question.
 
'He's generally up the stair aboot this hoor, mem—that is, whan he's no i' the parlour at 's lessons.'
 
'What gangs he sae muckle up the stair for, Betty, do ye ken? It's something by ordinar' wi' 'm.'
 
''Deed I dinna ken, mem. I never tuik it into my heid to gang considerin' aboot it. He'll hae some ploy o' 's ain, nae doobt. Laddies will be laddies, ye ken, mem.'
 
'I doobt, Betty, ye'll be aidin' an' abettin'. An' it disna become yer years, Betty.'
 
'My years are no to fin' faut wi', mem. They're weel eneuch.'
 
'That's naething to the pint, Betty. What's the laddie aboot?'
 
'Do ye mean whan he gangs up the stair, mem?'
 
'Ay. Ye ken weel eneuch what I mean.'
 
'Weel, mem, I tell ye I dinna ken. An' ye never heard me tell ye a lee sin' ever I was i' yer service, mem.'
 
'Na, nae doonricht. Ye gang aboot it an' aboot it, an' at last ye come sae near leein' that gin ye spak anither word, ye wad be at it; and it jist fleys (frights) me frae speirin' ae ither question at ye. An' that's hoo ye win oot o' 't. But noo 'at it's aboot my ain oye (grandson), I'm no gaein' to tyne (lose) him to save a woman o' your years, wha oucht to ken better; an sae I'll speir at ye, though ye suld be driven to lee like Sawtan himsel'.—What's he aboot whan he gangs up the stair? Noo!'
 
'Weel, as sure's deith, I dinna ken. Ye drive me to sweirin', mem, an' no to leein'.'
 
'I carena. Hae ye no idea aboot it, than, Betty?'
 
'Weel, mem, I think sometimes he canna be weel, and maun hae a tod (fox) in 's stamack, or something o' that nater. For what he eats is awfu'. An' I think whiles he jist gangs up the stair to eat at 's ain wull.'
 
'That jumps wi' my ain observations, Betty. Do ye think he micht hae a rabbit, or maybe a pair o' them, in some boxie i' the garret, noo?'
 
'And what for no, gin he had, mem?'
 
'What for no? Nesty stinkin' things! But that's no the pint. I aye hae to haud ye to the pint, Betty. The pint is, whether he has rabbits or no?'
 
'Or guinea-pigs,' suggested Betty.
 
'Weel.'
 
'Or maybe a pup or twa. Or I kent a laddie ance 'at keepit a haill faimily o' kittlins. Or maybe he micht hae a bit lammie. There was an uncle o' min' ain—'
 
'Haud yer tongue, Betty! Ye hae ower muckle to say for a' the sense there's intil 't.'
 
'Weel, mem, ye speirt questions at me.'
 
'Weel, I hae had eneuch o' yer answers, Betty. Gang and tell Robert to come here direckly.'
 
Betty went, knowing perfectly that Robert had gone out, and returned with the information. Her mistress searched her face with a keen eye.
 
'That maun hae been himsel' efter a' whan ye thocht ye hard the door gang,' said Betty.
 
'It's a strange thing that I suld hear him benn here wi' the door steekit, an' your door open at the verra door-cheek o' the ither, an' you no hear him, Betty. And me sae deif as weel!'
 
''Deed, mem,' retorted Betty, losing her temper a little, 'I can be as deif 's ither fowk mysel' whiles.'
 
When Betty grew angry, Mrs. Falconer invariably grew calm, or, at least, put her temper out of sight. She was silent now, and continued silent till Betty moved to return to her kitchen, when she said, in a tone of one who had just arrived at an important resolution:
 
'Betty, we'll jist awa' up the stair an' luik.'
 
'Weel, mem, I hae nae objections.'
 
'Nae objections! What for suld you or ony ither body hae ony objections to me gaein' whaur I like i' my ain hoose? Umph!' exclaimed Mrs. Falconer, turning and facing her maid.
 
'In coorse, mem. I only meant I had nae objections to gang wi' ye.'
 
'And what for suld you or ony ither woman that I paid twa pun' five i' the half-year till, daur to hae objections to gaein' whaur I wantit ye to gang i' my ain hoose?'
 
'Hoot, mem! it was but a slip o' the tongue—naething mair.'
 
'Slip me nae sic slips, or ye'll come by a fa' at last, I doobt, Betty,' concluded Mrs. Falconer, in a mollified tone, as she turned and led the way from the room.
 
They got a candle in the kitchen and proceeded up-stairs, Mrs. Falconer still leading, and Betty following. They did not even look into the ga'le-room, not doubting that the dignity of the best bed-room was in no danger of being violated even by Robert, but took their way upwards to the room in which he kept his school-books—almost the only articles of property which the boy possessed. Here they found nothing suspicious. All was even in the best possible order—not a very wonderful fact, seeing a few books and a slate were the only things there besides the papers on the shelves.
 
What the feelings of Shargar must have been when he heard the steps and voices, and saw the light approaching his place of refuge, we will not change our point of view to inquire. He certainly was as little to be envied at that moment as at any moment during the whole of his existence.
 
The first sense Mrs. Falconer made use of in the search after possible animals lay in her nose. She kept snuffing constantly, but, beyond the usual musty smell of neglected apartments, had as yet discovered nothing. The moment she entered the upper garret, however—
 
'There's an ill-faured smell here, Betty,' she said, believing that they had at last found the trail of the mystery; 'but it's no like the smell o' rabbits. Jist luik i' the nuik there ahin' the door.'
 
'There's naething here,' responded Betty.
 
'Roon the en' o' that kist there. I s' luik into the press.'
 
As Betty rose from her search behind the chest and turned towards her mistress, her eyes crossed the cavernous opening of the bed. There, to her horror, she beheld a face like that of a galvanised corpse staring at her from the darkness. Shargar was in a sitting posture, paralysed with terror, waiting, like a fascinated bird, till Mrs. Falconer and Betty should make the final spring upon him, and do whatever was equivalent to devouring him upon the spot. He had sat up to listen to the noise of their ascending footsteps, and fear had so overmastered him, that he either could not, or forgot that he could lie down and cover his head with some of the many garments scattered around him.
 
'I didna say whusky, did I?' he kept repeating to himself, in utter imbecility of fear.
 
'The Lord preserve 's!' exclaimed Betty, the moment she could speak; for during the first few seconds, having caught the infection of Shargar's expression, she stood equally paralysed. 'The Lord preserve 's!' she repeated.
 
'Ance is eneuch,' said Mrs. Falconer, sharply, turning round to see what the cause of Betty's ejaculation might be.
 
I have said that she was dim-sighted. The candle they had was little better than a penny dip. The bed was darker than the rest of the room. Shargar's face had none of the more distinctive characteristics of manhood upon it.
 
'Gude preserve 's!' exclaimed Mrs. Falconer in her turn: 'it's a wumman.'
 
Poor deluded Shargar, thinking himself safer under any form than that which he actually bore, attempted no protest against the mistake. But, indeed, he was incapable of speech. The two women flew upon him to drag him out of bed. Then first recovering his powers of motion, he sprung up in an agony of terror, and darted out between them, overturning Betty in his course.
 
'Ye rouch limmer!' cried Betty, from the floor. 'Ye lang-leggit jaud!' she added, as she rose—and at the same moment Shargar banged the street-door behind him in his terror—'I wat ye dinna carry yer coats ower syde (too long)!'
 
For Shargar, having discovered that the way to get the most warmth from Robert's great-grandfather's kilt was to wear it in the manner for which it had been fabricated, was in the habit of fastening it round his waist before he got into bed; and the eye of Betty, as she fell, had caught the swing of this portion of his attire.
 
But poor Mrs. Falconer, with sunken head, walked out of the garret in the silence of despair. She went slowly down the steep stair, supporting herself against the wall, her round-toed shoes creaking solemnly as she went, took refuge in the ga'le-room, and burst into a violent fit of weeping. For such depravity she was not prepared. What a terrible curse hung over her family! Surely they were all reprobate from the womb, not one elected for salvation from the guilt of Adam's fall, and therefore abandoned to Satan as his natural prey, to be led captive of him at his will. She threw herself on her knees at the side of the bed, and prayed heart-brokenly. Betty heard her as she limped past the door on her way back to her kitchen.
 
Meantime Shargar had rushed across the next street on his bare feet into the Crookit Wynd, terrifying poor old Kirstan Peerie, the divisions betwixt the compartments of whose memory had broken down, into the exclamation to her next neighbour, Tam Rhin, with whom she was trying to gossip:
 
'Eh, Tammas! that'll be ane o' the slauchtert at Culloden.'
 
He never stopped till he reached his mother's deserted abode—strange instinct! There he ran to earth like a hunted fox. Rushing at the door, forgetful of everything but refuge, he found it unlocked, and closing it behind him, stood panting like the hart that has found the water-brooks. The owner had looked in one day to see whether the place was worth repairing, for it was a mere outhouse, and had forgotten to turn the key when he left it. Poor Shargar! Was it more or less of a refuge that the mother that bore him was not there either to curse or welcome his return? Less—if we may judge from a remark he once made in my hearing many long years after:
 
'For, ye see,' he said, 'a mither's a mither, be she the verra de'il.'
 
Searching about in the dark, he found the one article unsold by the landlord, a stool, with but two of its natural three legs. On this he balanced himself and waited—simply for what Robert would do; for his faith in Robert was unbounded, and he had no other hope on earth. But Shargar was not miserable. In that wretched hovel, his bare feet clasping the clay floor in constant search of a wavering equilibrium, with pitch darkness around him, and incapable of the simplest philosophical or religious reflection, he yet found life good. For it had interest. Nay, more, it had hope. I doubt, however, whether there is any interest at all without hope.
 
While he sat there, Robert, thinking him snug in the garret, was walking quietly home from the shoemaker's; and his first impulse on entering was to run up and recount the particulars of his interview with Alexander. Arrived in the dark garret, he called Shargar, as usual, in a whisper—received no reply—thought he was asleep—called louder (for he had had a penny from his grandmother that day for bringing home two pails of water for Betty, and had just spent it upon a loaf for him)—but no Shargar replied. Thereupon he went to the bed to lay hold of him and shake him. But his searching hands found no Shargar. Becoming alarmed, he ran down-stairs to beg a light from Betty.
 
When he reached the kitchen, he found Betty's nose as much in the air as its construction would permit. For a hook-nosed animal, she certainly was the most harmless and ovine creature in the world, but this was a case in which feminine modesty was both concerned and aggrieved. She showed her resentment no further, however, than by simply returning no answer in syllable, or sound, or motion, to Robert's request. She was washing up the tea-things, and went on with her work as if she had been in absolute solitude, saving that her countenance could hardly have kept up that expression of injured dignity had such been the case. Robert plainly saw, to his great concern, that his secret had been discovered in his absence, and that Shargar had been expelled with contumely. But, with an instinct of facing the worst at once which accompanied him through life, he went straight to his grandmother's parlour.
 
'Well, grandmamma,' he said, trying to speak as cheerfully as he could.
 
Grannie's prayers had softened her a little, else she would have been as silent as Betty; for it was from her mistress that Betty had learned this mode of torturing a criminal. So she was just able to return his greeting in the words, 'Weel, Robert,' pronounced in a finality of tone that indicated she had done her utmost, and had nothing to add.
 
'Here's a browst (brewage)!' thought Robert to himself; and, still on the principle of flying at the first of mischief he saw—the best mode of meeting it, no doubt—addressed his grandmother at once. The effort necessary gave a tone of defiance to his words.
 
'What for willna ye speik to me, grannie?' he said. 'I'm no a haithen, nor yet a papist.'
 
'Ye're waur nor baith in ane, Robert.'
 
'Hoots! ye winna say baith, grannie,' returned Robert, who, even at the age of fourteen, when once compelled to assert himself, assumed a modest superiority.
 
'Nane o' sic impidence!' retorted Mrs. Falconer. 'I wonner whaur ye learn that. But it's nae wonner. Evil communications corrupt gude mainners. Ye're a lost prodigal, Robert, like yer father afore ye. I hae jist been sittin' here thinkin' wi' mysel' whether it wadna be better for baith o' 's to lat ye gang an' reap the fruit o' yer doin's at ance; for the hard ways is the best road for transgressors. I'm no bund to keep ye.'
 
'Weel, weel, I s' awa' to Shargar. Him and me 'ill haud on thegither better nor you an' me, grannie. He's a puir cratur, but he can stick till a body.'
 
'What are ye haverin' aboot Shargar for, ye heepocreet loon? Ye'll no gang to Shargar, I s' warran'! Ye'll be efter that vile limmer that's turnt my honest hoose intil a sty this last fortnicht.'
 
'Grannie, I dinna ken what ye mean.'
 
'She kens, than. I sent her aff like ane o' Samson's foxes, wi' a firebrand at her tail. It's a pity it wasna tied atween the twa o' ye.'
 
'Preserve 's, grannie! Is't possible ye hae ta'en Shargar for ane o' wumman-kin'?'
 
'I ken naething aboot Shargar, I tell ye. I ken that Betty an' me tuik an ill-faured dame i' the bed i' the garret.'
 
'Cud it be his mither?' thought Robert in bewilderment; but he recovered himself in a moment, and answered,
 
'Shargar may be a quean efter a', for onything 'at I ken to the contrairy; but I aye tuik him for a loon. Faith, sic a quean as he'd mak!'
 
And careless to resist the ludicrousness of the idea, he burst into a loud fit of laughter, which did more to reassure his grannie than any amount of protestation could have done, however she pretended to take offence at his ill-timed merriment.
 
Seeing his grandmother staggered, Robert gathered courage to assume the offensive.
 
'But, granny! hoo ever Betty, no to say you, cud hae driven oot a puir half-stervit cratur like Shargar, even supposin' he oucht to hae been in coaties, and no in troosers—and the mither o' him run awa' an' left him—it's mair nor I can unnerstan.' I misdoobt me sair but he's gane and droont himsel'.'
 
Robert knew well enough that Shargar would not drown himself without at least bidding him good-bye; but he knew too that his grandmother could be wrought upon. Her conscience was more tender than her feelings; and this peculiarity occasioned part of the mutual non-understanding rather than misunderstanding between her grandson and herself. The first relation she bore to most that came near her was one of severity and rebuke; but underneath her cold outside lay a warm heart, to which conscience acted the part of a somewhat capricious stoker, now quenching its heat with the cold water of duty, now stirring it up with the poker of reproach, and ever treating it as an inferior and a slave. But her conscience was, on the whole, a better friend to her race than her heart; and, indeed, the conscience is always a better friend than a heart whose motions are undirected by it. From Falconer's account of her, however, I cannot help thinking that she not unfrequently took refuge in severity of tone and manner from the threatened ebullition of a feeling which she could not otherwise control, and which she was ashamed to manifest. Possibly conscience had spoken more and more gently as its behests were more and more readily obeyed, until the heart began to gather courage, and at last, as in many old people, took the upper hand, which was outwardly inconvenient to one of Mrs. Falconer's temperament. Hence, in doing the kindest thing in the world, she would speak in a tone of command, even of rebuke, as if she were compelling the performance of the most unpleasant duty in the person who received the kindness. But the human heart is hard to analyze, and, indeed, will not submit quietly to the operation, however gently performed. Nor is the result at all easy to put into words. It is best shown in actions.
 
Again, it may appear rather strange that Robert should be able to talk in such an easy manner to his grandmother, seeing he had been guilty of concealment, if not of deception. But she had never been so actively severe towards Robert as she had been towards her own children. To him she was wonderfully gentle for her nature, and sought to exercise the saving harshness which she still believed necessary, solely in keeping from him every enjoyment of life which the narrowest theories as to the rule and will of God could set down as worldly. Frivolity, of which there was little in this sober boy, was in her eyes a vice; loud laughter almost a crime; cards, and novelles, as she called them, were such in her estimation, as to be beyond my powers of characterization. Her commonest injunction was, 'Noo be douce,'—that is sober—uttered to the soberest boy she could ever have known. But Robert was a large-hearted boy, else this life would never have had to be written; and so, through all this, his deepest nature came into unconscious contact with that of his noble old grandmother. There was nothing small about either of them. Hence Robert was not afraid of her. He had got more of her nature in him than of her son's. She and his own mother had more share in him than his father, though from him he inherited good qualities likewise.
 
He had concealed his doings with Shargar simply because he believed they could not be done if his grandmother knew of his plans. Herein he did her less than justice. But so unpleasant was concealment to his nature, and so much did the dread of discovery press upon him, that the moment he saw the thing had come out into the daylight of her knowledge, such a reaction of relief took place as, operating along with his deep natural humour and the comical circumstance of the case, gave him an ease and freedom of communication which he had never before enjoyed with her. Likewise there was a certain courage in the boy which, if his own natural disposition had not been so quiet that he felt the negations of her rule the less, might have resulted in underhand doings of a very different kind, possibly, from those of benevolence.
 
He must have been a strange being to look at, I always think, at this point of his development, with his huge nose, his black eyes, his lanky figure, and his sober countenance, on which a smile was rarely visible, but from which burst occasional guffaws of laughter.
 
At the words 'droont himsel',' Mrs. Falconer started.
 
'Rin, laddie, rin,' she said, 'an' fess him back direckly! Betty! Betty! gang wi' Robert and help him to luik for Shargar. Ye auld, blin', doited body, 'at says ye can see, and canna tell a lad frae a lass!'
 
'Na, na, grannie. I'm no gaein' oot wi' a dame like her trailin' at my fut. She wad be a sair hinnerance to me. Gin Shargar be to be gotten—that is, gin he be in life—I s' get him wantin' Betty. And gin ye dinna ken him for the crater ye fand i' the garret, he maun be sair changed sin' I left him there.'
 
'Weel, weel, Robert, gang yer wa's. But gin ye be deceivin' me, may the Lord—forgie ye, Robert, for sair ye'll need it.'
 
'Nae fear o' that, grannie,' returned Robert, from the street door, and vanished.
 
Mrs. Falconer stalked—No, I will not use that word of the gait of a woman like my friend's grandmother. 'Stately stept she butt the hoose' to Betty. She felt strangely soft at the heart, Robert not being yet proved a reprobate; but she was not therefore prepared to drop one atom of the dignity of her relation to her servant.
 
'Betty,' she said, 'ye hae made a mistak.'
 
'What's that, mem?' returned Betty.
 
'It wasna a lass ava; it was that crater Shargar.'
 
'Ye said it was a lass yersel' first, mem.'
 
'Ye ken weel eneuch that I'm short sichtit, an' hae been frae the day o' my birth.'
 
'I'm no auld eneuch to min' upo' that, mem,' returned Betty revengefully, but in an undertone, as if she did not intend her mistress to hear. And although she heard well enough, her mistress adopted the subterfuge. 'But I'll sweir the crater I saw was in cwytes (petticoats).'
 
'Sweir not at all, Betty. Ye hae made a mistak ony gait.'
 
'Wha says that, mem?'
 
'Robert.'
 
'Aweel, gin he be tellin' the trowth—'
 
'Daur ye mint (insinuate) to me that a son o' mine wad tell onything but the trowth?'
 
'Na, na, mem. But gin that wasna a quean, ye canna deny but she luikit unco like ane, and no a blate (bashful) ane eyther.'
 
'Gin he was a loon, he wadna luik like a blate lass, ony gait, Betty. And there ye're wrang.'
 
'Weel, weel, mem, hae 't yer ain gait,' muttered Betty.
 
'I wull hae 't my ain gait,' retorted her mistress, 'because it's the richt gait, Betty. An' noo ye maun jist gang up the stair, an' get the place cleant oot an' put in order.'
 
'I wull do that, mem.'
 
'Ay wull ye. An' luik weel aboot, Betty, you that can see sae weel, in case there suld be ony cattle aboot; for he's nane o' the cleanest, yon dame!'
 
'I wull do that, mem.'
 
'An' gang direckly, afore he comes back.'
 
'Wha comes back?'
 
'Robert, of course.'
 
'What for that?'
 
''Cause he's comin' wi' 'im.'
 
'What he 's comin' wi' 'im?'
 
'Ca' 't she, gin ye like. It's Shargar.'
 
'Wha says that?' exclaimed Betty, sniffing and starting at once.
 
'I say that. An' ye gang an' du what I tell ye, this minute.'
 
Betty obeyed instantly; for the tone in which the last words were spoken was one she was not accustomed to dispute. She only muttered as she went, 'It 'll a' come upo' me as usual.'
 
Betty's job was long ended before Robert returned. Never dreaming that Shargar could have gone back to the old haunt, he had looked for him everywhere before that occurred to him as a last chance. Nor would he have found him even then, for he would not have thought of his being inside the deserted house, had not Shargar heard his footsteps in the street.
 
He started up from his stool saying, 'That's Bob!' but was not sure enough to go to the door: he might be mistaken; it might be the landlord! He heard the feet stop and did not move; but when he heard them begin to go away again, he rushed to the door, and bawled on the chance at the top of his voice, 'Bob! Bob!'
 
'Eh! ye crater!' said Robert, 'ir ye there efter a'?
 
'Eh! Bob,' exclaimed Shargar, and burst into tears. 'I thocht ye wad come efter me.'
 
'Of coorse,' answered Robert, coolly. 'Come awa' hame.'
 
'Whaur til?' asked Shargar in dismay.
 
'Hame to yer ain bed at my grannie's.'
 
'Na, na,' said Shargar, hurriedly, retreating within the door of the hovel. 'Na, na, Bob, lad, I s' no du that. She's an awfu' wuman, that grannie o' yours. I canna think hoo ye can bide wi' her. I'm weel oot o' her grups, I can tell ye.'
 
It required a good deal of persuasion, but at last Robert prevailed upon Shargar to return. For was not Robert his tower of strength? And if Robert was not frightened at his grannie, or at Betty, why should he be? At length they entered Mrs. Falconer's parlour, Robert dragging in Shargar after him, having failed altogether in encouraging him to enter after a more dignified fashion.
 
It must be remembered that although Shargar was still kilted, he was not the less trowsered, such as the trowsers were. It makes my heart ache to think of those trowsers—not believing trowsers essential to blessedness either, but knowing the superiority of the old Roman costume of the kilt.
 
No sooner had Mrs. Falconer cast her eyes upon him than she could not but be convinced of the truth of Robert's averment.
 
'Here he is, grannie; and gin ye bena saitisfeed yet—'
 
'Haud yer tongue, laddie. Ye hae gi'en me nae cause to doobt yer word.'
 
Indeed, during Robert's absence, his grandmother had had leisure to perceive of what an absurd folly she had been guilty. She had also had time to make up her mind as to her duty with regard to Shargar; and the more she thought about it, the more she admired the conduct of her grandson, and the better she saw that it would be right to follow his example. No doubt she was the more inclined to this benevolence that she had as it were received her grandson back from the jaws of death.
 
When the two lads entered, from her arm-chair Mrs. Falconer examined Shargar from head to foot with the eye of a queen on her throne, and a countenance immovable in stern gentleness, till Shargar would gladly have sunk into the shelter of the voluminous kilt from the gaze of those quiet hazel eyes.
 
At length she spoke:
 
'Robert, tak him awa'.'
 
'Whaur'll I tak him till, grannie?'
 
'Tak him up to the garret. Betty 'ill ha' ta'en a tub o' het water up there 'gen this time, and ye maun see that he washes himsel' frae heid to fut, or he s' no bide an 'oor i' my hoose. Gang awa' an' see till 't this minute.'
 
But she detained them yet awhile with various directions in regard of cleansing, for the carrying out of which Robert was only too glad to give his word. She dismissed them at last, and Shargar by and by found himself in bed, clean, and, for the first time in his life, between a pair of linen sheets—not altogether to his satisfaction, for mere order and comfort were substituted for adventure and success.
 
But greater trials awaited him. In the morning he was visited by Brodie, the tailor, and Elshender, the shoemaker, both of whom he held in awe as his superiors in the social scale, and by them handled and measured from head to feet, the latter included; after which he had to lie in bed for three days, till his clothes came home; for Betty had carefully committed every article of his former dress to the kitchen fire, not without a sense of pollution to the bottom of her kettle. Nor would he have got them for double the time, had not Robert haunted the tailor, as well as the soutar, like an evil conscience, till they had finished them. Thus grievous was Shargar's introduction to the comforts of respectability. Nor did he like it much better when he was dressed, and able to go about; for not only was he uncomfortable in his new clothes, which, after the very easy fit of the old ones, felt like a suit of plate-armour, but he was liable to be sent for at any moment by the awful sovereignty in whose dominions he found himself, and which, of course, proceeded to instruct him not merely in his own religious duties, but in the religious theories of his ancestors, if, indeed, Shargar's ancestors ever had any. And now the Shorter Catechism seemed likely to be changed into the Longer Catechism; for he had it Sundays as well as Saturdays, besides Alleine's Alarm to the Unconverted, Baxter's Saint's Rest, Erskine's Gospel Sonnets, and other books of a like kind. Nor was it any relief to Shargar that the gloom was broken by the incomparable Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War, for he cared for none of these things. Indeed, so dreary did he find it all, that his love to Robert was never put to such a severe test. But for that, he would have run for it. Twenty times a day was he so tempted.
 
At school, though it was better, yet it was bad. For he was ten times as much laughed at for his new clothes, though they were of the plainest, as he had been for his old rags. Still he bore all the pangs of unwelcome advancement without a grumble, for the sake of his friend alone, whose dog he remained as much as ever. But his past life of cold and neglect, and hunger and blows, and homelessness and rags, began to glimmer as in the distance of a vaporous sunset, and the loveless freedom he had then enjoyed gave it a bloom as of summer-roses.
 
I wonder whether there may not have been in some unknown corner of the old lady's mind this lingering remnant of paganism, that, in reclaiming the outcast from the error of his ways, she was making an offering acceptable to that God whom her mere prayers could not move to look with favour upon her prodigal son Andrew. Nor from her own acknowledged religious belief as a background would it have stuck so fiery off either. Indeed, it might have been a partial corrective of some yet more dreadful articles of her creed,—which she held, be it remembered, because she could not help it.