 Book 2, Chapter 4 of Robert Falconer by George MacDonald. This Libra voxel recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George MacDonald. Chapter 4, The Aberdeen Garrett. Miss St. John had long since returned from her visit, but having heard how much Robert was taken up with his dying friend, she judged it better to leave her intended proposal of renewing her lessons alone for the present. Meeting him, however, soon after Alexander's death, she introduced the subject, and Robert was enraptured at the prospect of the reopening of the gates of his paradise. If he did not inform his grandmother of the fact, neither did he attempt to conceal it, but she took no notice, thinking probably that the whole affair would be effectually disposed of by his departure. While that period arrived, he had a lesson almost every evening, and Miss St. John was surprised to find how the boy had grown since the door was built up. Robert's gratitude grew into a kind of worship. The evening before his departure for body-fall, whence his grandmother had arranged that he should start for Aberdeen in order that he might have the company of Mr. Lammy, whom business drew thither about the same time, as he was having his last lesson, Mrs. Forsythe's left the room. Thereupon Robert, who had been dejected all day at the thought of the separation from Miss St. John, found his heart beating so violently that he could hardly breathe. Probably she saw his emotion, for she put her hand on the keys as if to cover it by showing him how some movement was to be better affected. He seized her hand and lifted it to his lips, but when he found that instead of snatching it away, she yielded it. Nay gently pressed it to his face. He burst into tears and dropped on his knees as if before goddess. Hush, Robert, don't be foolish. She said quietly and tenderly, Here is my aunt coming. The same moment he was at the piano again playing my Bonnie Lady Anne, so as to astonish Miss St. John and himself as well. Then he rose, bet a hasty good night and hurried away. A strange conflict arose in his mind at the prospect of leaving the old place. On every house of whose streets, on every swell of whose surrounding hills, he left the clinging shadows of thought and feeling. A faintly purpleed mist arose and unwrapped all the past, changing even his gayest troubles into tales of fairyland and his deepest griefs in the songs of a sad music. Then he thought of Shargar and what was to become of him after he was gone. The lad was paler and his eyes were redder than ever, for he had been weeping in secret. He went to his grandmother and begged that Shargar might accompany him to body fault. He mount by it at home and mine his books, she answered, for he will not have them that muckle longer. He mount be doing something for himself. So the next morning the boys parted, Shargar to school and Robert to body fault. Shargar left behind with his desolation, his son gone down in a west that was not even storming, only gray and hopeless, and Robert moving towards an east which reflected like a faint prophecy the west behind him tinged with love, death, and music, but mingled the colors with its own saffron of coming dawn. When he reached body fault he marveled to find that all its glory had returned. He found Mislami busy among the rich yellow pools in her dairy, and went out into the garden now in the height of its summer. Great cabbage roses hung heavy-headed splendors towards purple-black heartsieses and thin-filmed silvery pods of honesty. Tall white lilies mingled with the blossoms of current bushes, and at their feet the narcissy of old classic legend pressed their warm-hearted paleness into the plebeian thicket of the mini-striped gardener's gardeners. It was a lovely type of commonwealth indeed, of the garden of the kingdom of God. This whole mine was flooded with a sense of sunny wealth. The farmer's neglected garden blossomed into higher glory in his soul. The bloom and the richness and the use were all there, but instead of each flower was a delicate ethereal sense of feeling about that flower. Of these how gladly would he have gathered a posidaw for Miss St. John, but alas, he was no poet. Or rather, he had but the half of the poet's inheritance. He could see. He could not say. But even if he had been full of poetic speech he would yet have found that the half of his posi remained un-gathered. For although we have speech enough now to be cousin to the deed, as Chaucer says, it must always be, we have not yet enough speech to cousin the tenth part of our feelings. Let him who doubts recall one of his own vain attempts to convey that which made the oddest of dreams entrancing in loveliness. To convey that aroma of thought, the conscious absence of which made him a fool in his own eyes when he spoke such silly words as alone presented themselves for the service. I can no more describe the emotion aroused in my mind by a gray cloud parting over a gray stone, by the smell of a sweet pea, by the sight of one of those long upright penins of striped grass with the holy name, than I can tell what the glory of God is who made these things. The managed poetry is like nature in this, that it produces individual, incommunicable moods and conditions of mind, a sense of elevated, tender, marvelous, and effervescent existence, must be a poet indeed. Every dawn of such a feeling is a light-brust bubble, rendering visible for a moment the dark, unknown sea of our being, which lies beyond the lights of our consciousness, and is the stuff and the region of our eternal growth. But think what language must become before it will tell dreams, before it will convey the delicate shades of fancy that come and go in the brain of a child, before it will let a man know wherein one face differeth from another face in glory. I suspect, however, that for such purposes it is rather music than articulation that is needful, that with the hope of these finer results the language must rather be turned into music than logically extended. The next morning he awoke at early dawn, hearing the birds at his window. He rose and went out. The air was clear and fresh, as a new-made soul. Bars of model cloud were bent across the eastern quarter of the sky, which lay like a great ethereal ocean ready for the launch of the ship of glory that was now gliding towards its edge. Everything was waiting to conduct him across the far horizon to the south, where lay the stored-up wonder of his coming life. The lark sang of something greater than he could tell. The wind got up, whispered at it, and lay down to sleep again. The sun was at hand to bathe the world in the light and gladness alone fit to typify the radiance of Robert's thoughts. The clouds that formed the shore of the upper sea were already burning from saffron into gold. A moment more in the first insupportable sting of light would shoot from behind the edge of that low blue hill, and the first day of his new life would be begun. He watched, and it came. The wellspring of day, fresh and exuberant as if now first from the holy will of the father of lights, gushed into the basin of the world, and the world was more glad than tongue or pen can tell. The supernal light alone, dawning upon the human heart, can exceed the marvel of such a sunrise. And shall life itself be less beautiful than one of its days? Do not believe it, young brother. Men called the shadow, thrown upon the universe, where their own dusky souls come between it and the eternal sun, life, and then mourn that it should be less bright than the hopes of their childhood. Keep thou thy soul translucent, that thou mayest never see its shadow, at least never abuse thyself with the philosophy which calls that shadow life, or rather would I say, become thou pure in heart, and thou shalt see God, whose vision alone is life. Just as the sun rushed across the horizon, he heard the tramp of a heavy horse in the yard, passing from the stable to the cart that was to carry his trunk to the turnpike road, three miles off where the coach would pass. Then Miss Lamy came and called him to breakfast, and there sat the farmer in his Sunday suit of black already busy. Robert was almost too happy to eat, yet he had not swallowed two mouthfuls before the sun rose unheeded, the lark sang unheeded, and the roses sparkled with the dew that vowed yet lower their heavy heads, all unheeded. By the time they had finished, Mr. Lamy's gig was at the door, and they mounted and followed the cart. Not even the recurrent doubts and fear that hollowness was at the heart of it all, for that God could not mean such rainless gladness prevented the truth of the present joy from sinking deep into the lad's heart. In his mind he saw a boat moored to a rock, with no one on board, heaving on the waters of a rising tide and waiting to bear him out on the sea of the unknown. The picture rose of itself, there was no paradise of the West in his imagination, as in that of a boy of the 16th century to authorize its appearance. It rose again and again, the dew glittered as if the light were its own, the sun shone as he had never seen it shine before. The very mare that sped them along held up her head and stepped out as if she felt it the finest of moans. Had she also future poor old mare, might there not be a paradise somewhere, and if in the furthest star instead of next door America, why so much the more might the Atlantis of the 19th century surpass Manawa, the golden of the 17th? The gig and the cart reached the road together. One of the men who had accompanied the cart took the gig, and they were left on the roadside with Robert's tronkin box, the latter a present from Islami. Their places had been secured in the garden where he had to take them up. Long before the coach appeared, the notes of his horn as like the color of his red coat as the blindness of men could imagine came echoing from the side of the heathery, stony hill under which they stood so that Robert turned wondering as if the chariot of his desires had been coming over the top of drum snag to carry him into a heaven where all labor was delight. But around the corner of the front came the foreign hen red male instead. She pulled up gallantly. The wheelers lay on their hind quarters, and the leaders parted theirs from the pole. The boxes were hoisted up. Mr. Lamy climbed and Robert scrambled to his seat. The horn blue, the coachman spake oracularly, the horses obeyed, and away went the gorgeous symbol of sovereignty careering through the submissive region. Nor did Robert's delight obey during the journey, certainly not when he saw the blue line of the sea in the distance, a marvel, and yet a fact. Mrs. Falconer had consulted the Mrs. Napier, who had many acquaintances in Aberdeen as to a place proper for Robert and suitable to her means. Upon this point, Ms. Letty, not without a certain touch of design, as may appear in the course of my story, have been able to satisfy her. In a small house of two floors and a garret in the old town, Mr. Lamy took leave of Robert. It was from a garret window still, but a storm window now that Robert looked, eastward, across fields and sandhills, to the blue expanse of waters, not blue like southern seas, but slady blue, like the eyes of northmen. It was rather dreary. The sun was shining from overhead now, casting short shadows and much heat. The dew was gone up, and the lark had come down. He was alone. The end of his journey was come and was not anything very remarkable. His landlady interrupted his gaze to know what he would have for dinner, but he declined to use any discretion in the matter. When she left the room, he did not return to the window, but sat down upon his box. His eye fell upon the other, a big wooden cube. Of its contents, he knew nothing. He would amuse himself by making inquisition. It was nailed up. He borrowed a screwdriver and opened it. At the top lay a linen bag full of oatmeal. Underneath that was a thick layer of oat cake. Underneath that, two cheeses, a pound of butter, and six pots of jam, which ought to have tasted of roses, for it came from the old garden where the roses lived in such sweet companionship with the current bushes. Underneath that, et cetera, and underneath, et cetera, a box which strangely recalled Chargar's Garrett and one of the closets therein. With beating heart, he opened it and loathe to his marble, and with the restoration of all the fair day, there was the violin which Dubele Sanny had left him when he forsook per four, some one or other, of the queer instruments of Fry and Jelica's angels. In a flutter of delight, he sat down on his trunk again and played the most mournful tunes. Two white pigeons, which had been talking to each other in the heat of the roof, came one on each side of the window and peaked into the room. And out between them, as he played, Robert saw the sea and the blue sky above it. Is it any wonder that, instead of turning to the line pages and contorted sentences of the livy, which he had already unpacked from his box, he forgot all about school and college and went on play until his landlady brought up his dinner, which he swallowed hastily that he might return to the spells of his enchantress. And chapter four. Book two, chapter five of Robert Falconer by George McDonald. This Libra Box recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald. Chapter five, the competition. I could linger with the ladness even over this part of my hero's history. If the schoolwork was dry, it was thorough. If that academy had no sweetly shadowing trees, if it did stand within a parallelogram of low stone walls, containing a roughly graveled court, if all the region about suggested hot stones and sand, beyond still was the sea and the sky, and that court morning and afternoon was filled with the shouts of eager boys kicking the football with mad rushings to and fro, and sometimes with wounds and faintings, fit symbol of the equally resultless ambition with which many of them would follow the game of life in the years to come. Shock-headed highland cults and rough lowland steers, as many of them were, out of that group, out of the roughest of them, would emerge in time a few gentlemen, not of the type of your trim, self-contained clerical exquisite, but large-hearted, courteous gentleman for whom a man may thank God. And if the master was stern and hard, he was true. If the pupils feared him, they yet cared to please him. If there might be found not a few more widely-read scholars than he, it would be hard to find a better teacher. Robert leaned to the collar and labored, not greatly moved by ambition, but much by the hope of the bursary and the college life in the near distance. Not infrequently, he would rush into the thick of the football game, fight like a maniac for one short burst and then retire and look on. He often are regarded than mingled. He seldom joined his fellows after school hours for his work lay both upon his conscience and his hopes. But if he formed no very deep friendships among them, at least he made no enemies, for he was not selfish and in virtue of the Celtic blood in him was invariably courteous. His habits were in some things altogether irregular. He never went out for a walk, but sometimes looking out from his Virgil or his Latin version and seeing the blue expanse in the distance breaking into white under the viewless wing of the summer wind, he would fling down his dictionary or his pen, rush from his garret and fly in a straight line like a seagull weary of lake and river down to the waste shore of the great deep. This was all that stood for the Arabian nights of moon blossomed marble. All the rest was Aberdeen days of Latin and labor. Slowly the hours went and yet the dreaded hope four day came quickly. The quadrangle of the stone crowned collage grew more awful in its silence and emptiness every time Robert passed it and the professor's houses looked like the sentry boxes of the angles of learning. Soon to come forth and judge the feeble mortals who dared present a claim to their recognition. October faded softly by with its keen fresh mornings and cold memorial green horizon the evenings whose stairs fell like the stray blossoms of a more heavenly world from some ghostly wind of space that had caught them up on its awful shoreless sweep. November came chill and dear with its heartless hopeless nothingness but as if to mock the poor competitors rose after three days of scotch mist in a lovely housey on day of St. Martin's summer through whose long shadows anxious young faces gathered in the quadrangle or under the arcade each with his Ainsworth dictionary the soul book allowed under his arm but when the sacrist appeared and unlocked the public school and the black gowned professor walked into the room and the door was left open for the candidates to follow then indeed a great awe fell upon the assembly and the lads crept into their seats as if to a trial for life before a bench of the incorruptible. They took their places a portion of Robertson's history of Scotland was giving them to turn into Latin and soon there was nothing to be heard in the assembly but the turning of the leaves of dictionaries and the scratching of pens constructing the first rough copy of the Latinized theme. It was done four weary hours nearly five one or two of which passed like minutes the others as if each minute had been an hour went by and Robert in a kind of desperation after a final reading of the Latin gave in his paper and left the room. When he got home he asked his landlady to get him some tea until it was ready he would take his violin but even the violin had grown dull and would not speak freely. He returned to the torture took out his first copy and went over it once more. Hora Forres, a maxi that is a maximus error Mary Queen of Scots had been left so far behind in the beginning of the paper that she forgot the rights of her sex in the middle of it and in the accusative of a future participle passive and do not know if more modern grammarians had a different name for the growth had submitted to be doomed and her rightful Dom was henceforth and forever the bard. He rose rust out of the house down through the garden across two fields in a wide road across the links and so did the moaning lip of the sea for it was moaning that night from the last ballwork of the sand hills he dropped upon the wet sands and there he paced up and down. How long God only who was watching him knew with the low limitless form of the murmuring left lying out and out into the sinking sky like the life that lay low and hopeless before him for the want at most of 20 pounds a year. That was the highest bursary done to lift him into a region of possible wellbeing. Suddenly a strange phenomenon appeared within him. The subjectivity became the object to a new birth of consciousness. He began to look at himself. There's a serbit in there, he said, as if his own bosom had been that of another mortal. What's to be done with it? I do it, ma'am, bite it. We all that creature had better bite it quietly and knew cry out. Live doing and hold your tongue. Sorrow to a haught, mere treks, asked the brute. He burst out laughing after a doubtful and ogle in fashion, I dare say. But he went home, took up his old wife and played too long for him some 50 times over with extemporized variations. The next day he had to translate a passage from Tacitus after executing wit somewhat heartlessly. He did not open a Latin book for a whole week. The very sight of one was disgusting to him. He wandered about the new town along Union Street and up and down the stairs that led to the lower parts, haunted the quay, watched the vessels, learned their forms, their parts and capacities, made friends with a certain Dutch captain whom he heard playing the violin in his cabin and on the hall notwithstanding the wretched prospect before him contrived to spend the week with considerable enjoyment. Nor does an occasional episode of lounging hurt a life with any true claims to the epic form. The day of decision at length arrived. Again, the black rogue powers assembled and again the hoping, fearing lads, some of them not lads men and mere boys, gathered to hear their fate. Name after name was called out, a 20 pound bursary to the first, one of 17 to the next, three or four of 15 and 14 and so on for about 20 and still no Robert Falconer. At last, lagging weirdly in the rear, he heard his name, went up listlessly and was awarded five pounds. He kept home, wrote to his grandmother and awaited her reply. It was not long incoming, but although the carrier was generally the medium of communication, Miss Letty had contrived to send the answer by coach. It was to the effect that his grandmother was sorry that he had not been more successful, but that Mr. Innes thought it would be quite worthwhile to try again and he must therefore come home for another year. This was more to find enough, though not so bad as it might have been. Robert began to pack his box, but before he had finished it, he shut the lid and sat upon it. To meet Miss St. John thus disgraced was more than he could bear. If he remained, he had a chance of winning prizes at the end of the session and that would more than repair his honor. The five pound bursars were privileged in paying half fees and if he could only get some teaching he could manage. But who would employ a Bijan when a mad stride might be had for next to nothing? Besides, who would recommend him? The thought of Dr. Anderson flashed into his mind and he rushed from the house without even knowing where he lived. And chapter five, book two, chapter six of Robert Falconer by George McDonald. This Libra box recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald. Chapter six, Dr. Anderson again. At the post office, he procured the desired information at once. Dr. Anderson lived in Union Street towards the western end of it. Away went Robert to find the house. That was easy. What a grand house of smooth granite and wide approach it was. The great door was opened by a man's servant who looked at the country board from head to foot. Is the doctor in? asked Robert. Yes. I would like to see him. What will I say wants him? Say the laddie he saw at body fault. The man left Robert in the hall which was spread with tiger and leopard skins and had a bright fire burning in a large stone. Returning presently, he led him through noiseless swing doors covered with cloth into a large library. Never had Robert conceived such luxury but with turkey carpet, crimson curtains, easy chairs, friendly bound books, and Morocco covered writing table. It seemed the very ideal of comfort. But Robert liked the grandeur too much to be abashed by it. So you do in there said the servant and the doctor will be with you in a minute. He was hardly out of the room before a door opened in the middle of the books and the doctor appeared in a long dressing gown. He looked inquiringly at Robert for one moment then made two long strides like a pair of eager compasses holding out his hand. I'm Robert Faulkner said the boy. You'll mind maybe doctor at you were very kind to me once and tell it me lots of stories at body fault you can. I'm very glad to see you Robert said doctor Anderson. Of course I remember you perfectly but my servant did not bring your name and I did not know but it might be the other boy. I forget his name. You mean Shargar sir it's no him. I can see that said the doctor laughing. Although you are altered you have grown quite a man. I'm very glad to see you. He repeated shaking hands with him again. When did you come to town? I have been at the grammar school in the old tune for the last three months said Robert. Three months exclaimed doctor Anderson and never came to see me until now that was too bad of you Robert. Wheel you see sir I did not know better and I had a heap to do and all for Nathan after all but if I had known that you would like to see me I would have liked a wheel to come to you. I have been away most of the summer said the doctor but I've been at home for the last month. You haven't had your dinner have you? Wheel I did not exactly know what to say sir. You see I was not that sharp set the day so I had just a mouthful of bread and cheese. I'm turning hungry now I'll confess. The doctor rang the bell. You must stop and dine with me. Johnston he continued as his servant entered. Tell the coke that I have a gentleman to dinner with me today and she must be liberal. Good sake sir said Robert did not set the woman again me. He had no intention of saying anything humorous but doctor Anderson laughed heartily. Come into my room till dinner time he said opening the door by which he had entered. To Robert's astonishment he found himself in a room bare as that of the poorest cottage. A small square window small as the window in John Houston's looked out upon a garden neatly kept but now having no adorning but cleanliness. The place was just the end of a cottage. The walls were white wash the ceiling was of bare boards and the floor was sprinkled with a little white sand. The table and chairs were of common deal white and clean save that the former was spotted with ink. A greater contrast to the soft large richly colored room they had left could hardly be imagined. A few bookshelves on the wall were filled with old books. A fireplace cheerily in the little grave. A bed with snow white coverlets stood in a recess. This is the nicest room in the house Robert said the doctor. When I was a student like you Robert shook his head. I'm not a student yet he said but the doctor went on. I had the bad end of my father's cottage to study in for he treated me like a stranger gentleman when I came home from college. The father respected the son for whose advantage he was working like a slave from morning till night. My heart is sometimes sore with the gratitude I feel to him though he has been dead for 30 years. Would you believe it Robert? Well I can't talk more about him now. I made this room as like my father's as I could and I am happier here than anywhere in the world. By this time Robert was perfectly at home. Before the dinner was ready he had not only told Dr. Anderson his present difficulty but his whole story as far back as he could remember. The good man listened to eagerly gaze at the boy with more and more of interest which deepened till his eyes glistened as he gazed and when a ludicrous passage intervened welcome the laughter as the excuse for wiping them. When dinner was announced he rose with that award and led the way to the dining room. Robert followed and they sat down to a meal simple enough for such a house but which to Robert seemed a feast followed by a banquet. For after they had done eating on the doctor's part of very meager performance they retired to his room again and then Robert found the table covered with the snowy cloth and wine and fruits arranged upon it. It was far into the night before he rose to go home. As he passed through a thick rain of pinpoint drops he felt that although those cold granite houses with glimmering dead face stood like rows of supple curves he was in reality walking through an avenue of homes. Wet to the skin long before he reached Mrs. Fivies in the all-tune he was notwithstanding as warm as the underside of a bird's wing for he had to sit down and write to his grandmother and forming her that Dr. Anderson had employed him to copy for the printers a book of his upon the medical boards of India and that as he was going to pay him for that and other work at a rate which would secure him ten shillings a week it would be a pity to lose a year for the chance of getting a bursary next winter. The doctor did want the manuscript copied and he knew that the only chance of getting Mrs. Falconer's consent to Robert's receiving any assistance from him was to make some business arrangement of that sort. He wrote to her the same night and after mentioning the unexpected pleasure of Robert's visit not only explained the advantage to himself of the arrangement he had proposed but set forth the greater advantage to Robert in as much as he would thus be able in some measure to keep a hold of him. He judged that although Mrs. Falconer had no great opinion of his religion she would yet consider his influence rather on the side of good than otherwise in the case of a boy else abandoned to his own resources. The end of it all was that his grandmother yielded and Robert was straight away a Vijan or yellow beet. Three days had he clothed in the red gown of the Aberdeen student and had attended the humanity in Greek classrooms. On the evening of the third day he was seated at his table preparing his Virgil for the next when he found himself growing very weary and no wonder for except the walk of a few hundred yards to and from the college he had had no open air for those three days. It was raining in a persistent November fashion and he thought of the sea away through the dark and the rain tossing uneasily. Should he pay it a visit he sat for a moment this way and that dividing the swift mind. Tennyson's mortal artur When his eye fell on his violin he had been so full of his new position and its requirements that he had not touched it since the session opened. Now it was just what he wanted he caught it up eagerly and began to play. The power of the music seized upon him and he went on playing forgetful of everything else till a string broke. It was all too short for further use. Regardless of the rain or the depth of darkness to be traversed before he could find a music shop he caught up his cap and went to rush from the house. His door opened immediately on the top step to the stair without any landing. There was a door opposite to which likewise a few steps led immediately up. The stairs from the two doors united a little below so near were the doors that one might stride across the fort. The opposite door was open and in it stood Eric Erickson. And Chapter 6 Book 2 Chapter 7 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald Chapter 7 Eric Erickson Robert sprang across the dividing chasm, clasped Erickson's hand in both of his, looked up into his face and stood speechless. Erickson returned the salute with a still kindness, tender and still. His face was like a gray morning sky of summer, from whose level cloud feels rain will fall before noon. So it was you, he said, playing the violin so well. I was doing my best, answered Robert, but eh, Mr. Erickson, I would have done better if I had known you was harkening. You couldn't do better than your best, returned Eric smiling. I bet your best might I grow better, you know, persisted Robert. Come into my room, said Erickson. This is Friday night and there is nothing but chapel tomorrow, so we'll have talk instead of work. In another moment they were seated by a tiny cold fire in a room, one side of which was the slope of the roof, with the large low skylighting it looking seawards. The sound of the distant waves, unheard in Robert's room, beat upon the drama of the skylight, through all the world of mist that lay between it and them, dimly, vaguely, but ever and again with the swell of gathered force that made the distant tumult doubtful no more. I'm sorry I have nothing to offer you, said Erickson. You remind me of Peter and John at the beautiful gate of the temple, returned Robert, attempting to speak English like the Northerner, but breaking down as his heart got the better of him. Eh, Mr. Erickson, if he knew what it is to me to see the face of you, you would not spake like that. Just let me sit and look at you. I want name more. A smile broke up the cold, sad gray light of the young eagle face. Stirring it once and gentle, when in repose, its smile was as the summer of some lovely land, for neither the heat nor the sun shall smite them. The youth laid his hand upon the boy's head, then withdrew it hastily, and the smile vanished like the sun behind a cloud. Robert saw it, and as if he had been David before Saul rose instinctively and said, I'll go on from my fiddle, hoots, I have broken on of the strings, we mount by till the morn. But I want near fiddle myself when I hear the great water root there. You're young at, my boy, or you might hear voices in that water. I've lived in the sound of it all my days. When I can't rest at night, I hear a moaning and crying in the dark, and I lie and listen till I can't tell whether I'm a man or some god forsaken sea in the sunless north. Sometimes I believe in nothing but my fiddle, answered Robert. Yes, yes, but when it comes into you, my boy, you won't hear much music in the cry of the sea after that. As long as you've got it at arm's length, it's all very well. It's interesting then, and you can talk to your fiddle about it and make poetry about it, said Eric, sending to smile as self-contempt. But as soon as the real earnest comes that is all over, the semen is the cry of a tortured world then. Its hollow bed is the cup of the world's pain, ever rolling from side to side and dashing over its lip. Of all that might be, ought to be, nothing to be had. I could get music out of it once. Look here, I could try for like that once. He half rose and dropped on his chair, but Robert's believing eyes justified confidence, and Erickson had never had anyone to talk to. He rose again, opened the cupboard at his side, took out some papers, threw them on the table, and, taking his hat, walked towards the door. Which of your strings is broken, he asked. The third, answered Robert. I will get you one, said Erickson, and before Robert could reply he was down the stair. Robert heard him cough, then the door shut, and he was gone in the rain and fog. Bewildered, unhappy, ready to fly after him, yet irresolute, Robert almost mechanically turned over the papers upon the little deal table. He was soon arrested by the following verses, headed, a noonday melody. Everything goes to its rest, the hills are asleep in the noon, and life is as still in its nest as the moon when she looks on a moon, in the depths of the calm river's breast, as it steals through a midnight in June. The streams have forgotten the sea in the dream of their musical sound, the sunlight is thick on the tree, and the shadows lie warm on the ground, so still you may watch them and see every breath that awakens around. The churchyard lies still in that heat, with its handful of moldering bone, as still is the long stalk of wheat in the shadow that sits by the stone, as still is the grass at my feet when I walk in the meadows alone. The waves are asleep on the main, and the ships are asleep on the wave, and the thoughts are as still in my brain as the echo that sleeps in the cave. I'll rest from their labor and pain, then why should not I in my grave? His heart ready to burst with the sorrow, admiration, and devotion which no criticism interfered to qualify, Robert rushed out into the darkness and sped, fleetfooted along the only path which Ericsson could have taken. He could not bear to be left in the house while his friend was out in the rain. He was sure of joining him before he reached the new town, for he was fleetfooted, and there was a path only on one side of the way so that there was no danger of passing him in the dark. As he ran he heard the moaning of the sea. There must be a storm somewhere, away in the deep spaces of its dark bosom, and its slips muttered of its far unrest. When the sun rose it would be seen misty and gray, tossing about under the one rain cloud that like thinner ocean overspread the heavens, tossing like an animal that would feign lie down and be at peace, but could not compose its unwieldy strength. Suddenly Robert slack into speed, ceased running, stood, gazed through the darkness at a figure a few yards before him. An old wall, bowed out with age, and weight behind it flanked the road in this part. Doors in a swall, with a few steps in front of them and more behind, led up into gardens upon a slope, at the top of which stood the houses to which they belonged. Against one of these doors the figure stood, with its head bowed upon its hands. When Robert was within a few feet it descended and went on. Mr. Erickson, exclaimed Robert, you'll get your death if you stand that way in the wheat. Amen, said Erickson, turning with a smile that glimmered, when, through the misty night, then changing his tone he went on. What are you after, Robert? You, answered Robert, I could not buy to be left alone when I might be with you all the time, if you would let me. You were to the house before I well knew what you was about. It's now a fit night for you to be with, at a more by the taken, but you're no day ableist to stand cold and wheat. I've stood a great deal of both in my time, returned Erickson, but come along, we'll go and get that fiddle string. Did not you think it would be fully better to go on home? Robert ventured to suggest. What would be the use? I'm in no mood for a play-toe tonight, he answered, trying hard to keep from shivering. You have an ill-called upon you, persisted Robert, and you mount to be as wheat as a dishcloth. Erickson laughed, a strange hollow laugh. Come along, he said. A walk will do me good. We'll get the string and then you shall play to me. That will do me more good yet. Robert ceased opposing him and they walked together to the new town. Robert bought the string and they set out as he thought to return. But not yet did Erickson seem inclined to go home. He took the lead and they emerged upon the quay. There was not many vessels, one of them was the Antwerp Tub already known to Robert. He recognized her even in the dull light of the quay lamps. Her captain, being a prudent and well-to-do Dutchman, never slept on shore. He preferred saving his money, and therefore as the friends passed, Robert caught sight of him walking his own deck and smoking a long clay pipe before turning in. A fine-knife captain, said Robert. It does rain, returned the captain. Will you come on board and have one schnapps before you turn in? I have a friend with me here, said Robert, feeling his way. Let him calm and be welcomed. Erickson, making no objection, they went on board and down into the neat little cabin, which was all the roomier for the straightness of the vessel's quarter. The captain got out of square, coughing shoulder bottle, and having respect to the condition of the garments, neither of the young men refused his hospitality. The Robert did feel a little compunction at the thought of the whore it would have caused his grandmother. Then the Dutchman got out, his violin, and asked Robert to play a scotch air. But in the middle of it his eyes fell on Erickson, and he stopped at once. Erickson was sitting on a locker, leaning back against the side of the vessel. His eyes were open and fixed, and he seemed quite unconscious of what was passing. Robert fancied at first that the hollands he had taken had gone to his head, but he saw at the same moment from his glass that he had scarcely tasted the spirit. In great alarm they tried to rouse him, and at length succeeded. He closed his eyes, opened them again, rose up, and was going away. What's the matter with you, Mr. Erickson, said Robert in distress. Nothing, nothing answered Erickson in a strange voice. I fell asleep, I believe. It was very bad manners, Captain, I beg your pardon. I believe I am overtired. The Dutchman was as kind as possible, and begged Erickson to stay the night and occupy his birth. But he insisted on going home, although he was clearly unfit for such a walk. They bade the skipper good night, went on shore, and set out, Erickson leaning rather heavily upon Robert's arm. Robert led him up Mariskal Street. The steep ascent was too much for Erickson. He stood still upon the bridge and leaned over the wall of it. Robert stood beside, almost in despair, about getting him home. Have patience with me, Robert, said Erickson, in his natural voice. I shall be better presently. I don't know what's come to me. If I had been a kelp now, I should have said I had a touch of the second sight. But I am, as far as I know, pure Northman. What did you see? asked Robert, with a strange feeling that miles of the spirit world, if one may be allowed such a contradiction in words, lay between him and his friend. Erickson returned no answer. Robert feared he was going to have a relapse, but in a moment more he lifted himself up and bent again to the work. They got on pretty well till they were about the middle of the gallow gate. I can't, said Erickson feebly, and half leaned, half fell against the wall of the house. Come into this shop, said Robert. I know the man. He'll let you sit doomed. He managed to get him in. He was as pale as death. The bookseller got a chair and he sank into it. Robert was almost at his wit's end. There was no such thing as a cab in Aberdeen for years and years after the date of my story. He was holding a glass of water to Erickson's lips when he heard his name in a low, earnest whisper from the door. There, around the door cheek, peered the white face and red head of Sargar. Robert, Robert, said Sargar. I hear ye, returned Robert Cooley. He was too anxious to be surprised at anything. Hold your tongue. I'll come to ye in a minute. Erickson recovered a little, refused a whiskey offered by the bookseller, rose, and staggered out. If I were only home, he said. But where is home? We'll try to make on, returned Robert. Take a hold of me. Lay your weight upon me. If it were not for your length, I could carry you wheel enough. Where's that Sargar? He muttered to himself, looking up and down the gloomy street. But no Sargar was to be seen. Robert peered in vain into every dark court they crept past, till it length he all but came to the conclusion that Sargar was only fantastical. When they had reached the hollow and were crossing the canal bridge by Mount Hooli, Erickson's strength again failed him, and again he leaned upon the bridge. Not had he leaned long before Robert found that he had fainted. In desperation he began to hoist a tall form upon his back, when he heard the quick step of a runner behind him and the words, Give him to me, Robert. Give him to me. I can carry him fine. Hold away with ye, returned Robert, and again Sargar fell behind. For a few hundred yards he trudged along manfully, but his strength, more from the nature of his burden than its weight, soon gave way. He stood still to recover. The same moment Sargar was by his side again. No Robert, he said pleadingly. Robert yielded and the burden was shifted to Sargar's back. How they managed it they hardly knew themselves, but after many changes they at last got Erickson home and up to his own room. He had revived several times but gone off again. In one of his faints Robert undressed him and got him into bed. He had so little to cover him that Robert could not help crying with misery. He himself was well provided and would gladly have shared with Erickson, but that was hopeless. He could however make him warm in bed. Then leaving Sargar in charge he sped back to the new town to Dr. Anderson. The doctor had the carriage out at once, wrapped Robert in a plaid and brought him home with him. Erickson came to himself and seeing Sargar by his bedside tried to sit up, asking feebly. Where am I? In your own bed Mr. Erickson answered Sargar. And who are you? asked Erickson again bewildered. Sargar's pale face no doubt looked strange under his crown of red hair. Ow, I'm nobody. You must be somebody or else my brains in a bad state returned Erickson. Nay, nay, I'm nobody, nathin' it all. Robert'll be home in a minute. I'm Robert's dog, concluded Sargar with a sudden inspiration. This answer seemed to satisfy Erickson, for he closed his eyes and lay still, nor did he speak again till Robert arrived with the doctor. Poor food, scanty clothing, undue exertion, in traveling to and from the university, hard mental effort against weakness, disquietude of mind, all born with an endurance unconscious of itself, had reduced Erickson to his present condition. Strength had given way at last and he was now lying in the low border wash of a dead sea of fever. The last of an ancient race of poor men, he had no relative but a second cousin, and no means except the little he advanced him, chiefly in kind to be paid for when Erick had a profession. This cousin was in the herring trade, and the chief assistance he gave him was to send him by sea from Wick to Aberdeen, a small barrel of his fish every session. One herring with two or three potatoes formed his dinner as long as the barrel lasted, but at Aberdeen or elsewhere no one carried his head more erect than Erickson, not from pride, but from simplicity and inborn dignity, and there was not a man during the curriculum more respected than he. An excellent classical scholar, as scholarship went in those days, he was almost the only man at the university who made his knowledge of Latin serve towards an acquaintance with the romance languages. He had gained a small bursary and gave lessons when he could, but having no level channel for the outgoing of the waters of one of the tenderest hearts that ever lived, those waters had sought to break passage upwards. Herein his experience corresponded in a considerable degree to that of Robert. Only Erick's more fastidious and more instructed nature bred a thousand difficulties, which he would meet one by one, whereas Robert, less delicate and more robust, would break through all the oppositions of theological science, falsely so called, and take the kingdom of heaven by force. But indeed the ruins of the ever-falling temple of theology had accumulated far more heavily over Robert's well of life than over that of Erickson. The obstructions to his faith were those that rolled from the disintegrating mountains of humanity, rather than the rubbish heaped upon it by the careless masons who take the quarry whence they hew the stones for the temple, billed without hands, eternal in the heavens. When Dr. Anderson entered, Erickson opened his eyes wide. The doctor approached and taken his hand began to feel his pulse. Then first Erickson comprehended his visit. I can't, he said, withdrawing his hand. I am not so ill as to need a doctor. My dear sir, said Dr. Anderson courteously, there will be no occasion to put you to any pain. Sir, said Erick, I have no money. The doctor laughed, and I have more than I know how to make a good use of. I would rather be left alone, persisted Erickson, turning his face away. Now my dear sir, said the doctor, with gentle decision, that is very wrong. With what face can you offer a kindness when your term comes, if you won't accept one yourself? Erickson held at his wrist. Dr. Anderson questioned, prescribed, and having given directions went home to call again in the morning. And now Robert was somewhat in the position of the old woman who had so many children she didn't know what to do. Dr. Anderson ordered nourishment for Erickson, and here was Shargar upon his hands as well. Shargar and he could share, to be sure, and exist. But for Erickson, not a word did Robert exchange with Shargar till he had gone to the druggist and got the medicine for Erickson, who after taking it fell into a troubled sleep. Then, leaving the two doors opened, Robert joined Shargar in his own room. There he made up a good fire, and they sat and dried themselves. No Shargar, said Robert at length, who came ye here? His question was too like one of his grandmothers to be pleasant to Shargar. Did not spake to me that way, Robert, or I'll cut my throat, he returned. Hoots, I don't know all about it, insisted Robert, but with much modified and partly convicted tone. Well, I never said I would not tell you all about it. The fact is this, and I'm no up to the line as I used to be, Robert. I have tried it or an or, but the lie comes rough, throw my windpipe new. Faith, I could have lied once with anybody barring the devil. I will not lie, I may lie. The fact is just this, I could not buy the hind ye only longer. But what, the macalong tale devil, am I to do with ye, returned Robert, in real perplexity, though only pretended displeasure. Give me something to ate, and I'll tell you what to do with me, answered Shargar. I did not care scratch what it is. Robert rang the bell, and ordered some porridge, and while it was preparing, Shargar told the story. How having heard a rumor of apprenticeship to a tailor, he had the same night dropped from the gable window to the ground, and with three half-pence in his pocket, had wandered and begged his way to Aberdeen, arriving with one half-penny left. But what am I to do with ye, said Robert once more, in as much perplexity as ever. Buy till I have tell to ye, as I said I would, answered Shargar. Do not ye think I'm the careless and therefore helpless creature I used to be. I have been in Aberdeen three days, I, and I have seen ye ill-caday, and ye're red-gone, and right brow it is, look ye here. He put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out what amounted to two or three shillings, chiefly in coppers, which he exposed with triumph on the table. Quick, I ye all that siller, man, asked Robert. Here and there I cannot war, but I have given the weight of it for it all the same. Running here and running there, carrying boxes till and fray from the smacks, and doing all things, whether they bade me or no. Yesterday morning I got three-pence by hanging a boot the royal before the coaches started. I looked it up and down the street till I saw somebody hide away with the pork manty. Till him I ran, and he was an old man, and most at last gasped with the weight of it gone me to carry. And what do ye think gave me a shill in the very first night? What but my brother Sandy? Lord Rothy? I faith, I knew him wheeling off, but little he knew me. There he was upon black jordy, he's turned an old new. Your brother? Nay, he's young enough for an emissive, but black jordy. What on earth gars him gone, Stravagan a boot upon that devil? A dut he's a kelpie, or a hell horse, or something nocanny of that kind. For faith, brother Sandy's nor a rocanny himself, I'm thinking. But jordy, the older the war inclined, and so I'm thinking with his master. Did ye ever see your father, Shargar? Nay, nor I do not want to see him. I'm upon my mother's side, but that's nothing to the point. All that I want of you is to let me come home at night, and lie upon the floor here. I swear I'll lie in the street if ye do not let me. I'll sleep as sands Peter MacKinnis, when MacLeary's preaching. And I will not ate muck all, I have dreadful poor Alayton. And all that I gather I'll fess on to you, to do with as ye like. Man, I carried a heap of things today, till the skipper that boat at Yeek go'd into with Mr. Erickson that night. He's a fine child, that skipper. Robert was astonished at the change that had passed upon Shargar. His departure had cast him upon his own resources, and allowed the individuality repressed by every event of his history, even by his worship of Robert, to begin to develop itself. Miserable for a few weeks, he had revived in the fancy that to work hard at school would give him some chance of rejoining Robert. Thence too, he had watched to please Mrs. Falconer, and had indeed begun to buy golden opinions from all sorts of people. He had a hope in prospect, but into the midst fell the whisper of the apprenticeship, like a thunderbolt out of the clear sky. He fled at once. Well, you can have my bed the night, said Robert, for I am now to sit up with Mr. Erickson. Deid, I'll have nothing of the kind. I'll sleep upon the floor, or else upon the doorstand. Man, I'm no clean enough after what I've come through, since I drop it from the window cell in the gala room. But just lend me your plaid, and I'll sleep upon the rug here as if I were in parodies, and face so I am, Robert. You might go on to your bed some time the night, besides, or you will not be fit for your work the morn. You can just give me a kick, and I'll be up before you can give me another. The supper arrived from below, and each on the one side of the fire, they ate the porridge conversing all the while about old times. For the youngest life has its old times, its golden age, and old adventures. Double sanny, Betty, et cetera, et cetera. There were but two subjects which Robert avoided, Miss St. John and the Bonnie Lady. Sharger was at length deposited upon the little bit of hearth rug, which adorned rather than enrich the room, with Robert's plaid of separate tartan around him, and an Ainsworth dictionary under his head for a pillow. Man, I find myself just like a muck of sheepdog, he said. When I close my eye, and I'm no sure that I'm no in the inside of your old lucky daddy's kilt, the Lord preserved me from ever such a fright again as your granny and Betty gave me the night they found me in it. I did not believe it is nature to have such a fright twice in a lifetime, so I'll fall asleep at once and say no more. But as muckled my prayers as I can mind upon new at granny's no at my leg. Hold your impudence in your tongue, the gather, said Robert, mine at my granny's been the best friend you ever had. Set my own mother, returned Sharger with a sleepy dogginess in his tone. During their conference, Ericsson had been slumbering. Robert had visited him from time to time, but he had not awakened. As soon as Sharger was disposed of, he took his candle and sat down by him. He grew more uneasy. Robert guessed that the candle was the cause, and put it out. Ericsson was quieter, so Robert sat in the dark. But the rain had now ceased. Some upper wind had swept the clouds from the sky, and the whole world of stars was radiant over the earth and its griefs. Oh God, where art thou, he said in his heart, and went to his own room to look out. There was no curtain, and the blind had not been drawn down, therefore the earth looked in at the storm window. The sea neither glimmered nor shone. It lay across the horizon like a low-level cloud, out of which came a moaning. Was this moaning all of the earth, or was there trouble in the starry places too? Thought Robert, as if already he had begun to suspect the truth from afar, that save in the secret place of the Most High, and in the heart that is hid with the Son of Man in the bosom of the Father, there is trouble, a sacred unrest everywhere. The moaning of a tide is setting homewards, even towards the bosom of that Father. Chapter 8 A Human Providence Robert kept himself thoroughly awake the whole night, and it was well that he had not to attend classes in the morning. As the gray of the world's reviving consciousness melted in at the window, the things around and within him looked and felt ghastly. Nothing is likeer the gray dawn than the soul of one who has been watching by a sick bed all the long hours of the dark, except indeed it be the first glimmerings of truth on the mind lost in the dark of a godless life. Erickson had waked often, and Robert had administered his medicine carefully, but he had been mostly between sleeping and waking, and had murmured strange words, whose passing shadows, rather than glimmers, roused the imagination of the youth as with messages from regions unknown. As the light came he found his senses going, and went to his own room again to get a book that he might keep himself awake by reading at the window. To his surprise, Chargar was gone, and for a moment he doubted whether he had not been dreaming all that had passed between them the night before. His plight was folded up, and laid upon a chair, as it had been there all night, and his Ainsworth was on the table. But beside it was the money Chargar had drawn from his pockets. About nine o'clock Dr. Anderson arrived, found Erickson not so much worse as he had expected, comforted Robert, and told him he must go to bed. But I cannot leave Mr. Erickson, said Robert. Let your friend, what's his odd name, watch him during the day. Chargar, you mean sir, but that's his nickname. His rail name, they say, his mother says, is George More, with an O and no, no a UR. DC concluded Robert significantly. No I don't, answered the doctor. They say he's the son of an old Marquis, that's it. His mother's a randy wife that goes about the country, a gypsy they say. Doesn't they do it about her? And by all accounts, the father is likely enough. And how on earth did you come to have such a questionable companion? Chargar says, find a creature as God made, said Robert warmly. Ullaloo at God made him doctor, though his father and mother thought not muckalabutim, or God either when they got him between them. And Chargar could not help it. It might have been you or me for that man a doctor. I beg your pardon Robert, said Dr. Anderson quietly, although delighted with the fervor of his young kinsmen. I only wanted to know how he came to be your companion. I beg your pardon doctor, but I thought you was some scunner at it, and I cannot bide Chargar to be looked down upon. Look here he continued, going to his box and bringing out Chargar's little heap of coppers, in which two sixpence obscurely shone. He brought all that home last night, and signed sleep it upon the rug in my room there. We'll want all that he can make, and me too, before we get Mr. Erickson up again. But ye have not tellt me yet, said the doctor, so pleased with the lad that he had relapsed into the dialect of his youth. Ho ye came to foregather with him. I'll tell ye all about it doctor. It was all my grain is doing, God bless her. For whale he may, and muckal she needs it. Oh yes I remember now all your grandmother's part in the story returned the doctor, but I still want to know how he came here. She was going on to make a tailor of him, and he just ran away and came to me. It was too bad of him that, after all she had done for him. I'll deed no doctor, even when ye bought a man and paid for him according to the Jewish law. You could not make a slave of him for all together on him seeking it himself. If she could only get my father home, said Robert after a pause. What should she want him home for? asked Dr. Anderson, still making conversation. I did not mean home to her often then. I believe she could buy never seeing him again. If only he was not in the ill place. She has awful notions about burning ill souls forever and ever, but it's not herself. It's the white of the ministers. Doctor I do believe she would go on and be burnt herself with the great thanksgiving if it would let only poor creature out of it, not to sin a father. And I saw must do it if many of them at put it in her head would do as muckle. I'm some fear there like Paul for he was converted. He would not lift a stone himself, but he liked it will to stand with by and look on. A deep sigh, almost a groan from the bed reminded them that they were talking too much and too loud for a sick room. It was followed by the words muttered but articulate. What's the good when you don't know whether there's a God at all? Deed. That's very true, Mr. Erickson returned Robert. I wish you would find out and tell me. I would be obliged to hear what you had to say on it, so that if it was I, you can. Erickson went on murmuring, been inarticulately now. This won't do it all, Robert, my boy, said Dr. Anderson. You must not talk about such things with him or indeed about anything. You must keep him as quiet as ever you can. I thought he was coming to himself, returned Robert, but I will take care, I assure you, doctor. Only I'm feared I may fall asleep the night, for I was so sleepy this morning. I will send Johnston as soon as I get home, and you must go to bed when he comes. Deed, doctor, that will not do at all. It would be our money, strange faces altogether. We'll get Mrs. Fivy to look till him the day, and Chargar cannot work the morning, being Sunday, and I'll go on to my bed for fear of doing war, though I do it, I will not sleep in the daylight. Dr. Anderson was satisfied and went home, cogitating much. This boy, this cousin of his, made a vortex of good about him into which whoever came near it was drawn. He seemed at the same time quite unaware of anything worthy in his conduct. The good he did sprung from some inward necessity, with just enough in it of the salt of choice to keep it from losing its saber. To these cogitations of Dr. Anderson, I add that there was no conscious exercise of religion in it, for there his mind was all at sea. Of course I believe not withstanding that religion had much, to say everything, to do with it. Robert had not yet found in God a reason for being true to his fellows, but if God was leading him to be the man he became, how could any good results of this needing be other than religious? All good is of God. Robert began where he could. The first table was too high for him, he began with the second. If a man loved his brother whom he hath seen, the love of God whom he hath not seen is not very far off. These results in Robert were the first outcome of divine facts and influences. They were the buds of the fruit thereafter to be gathered in perfect devotion. God be praised by those who know religion to be truth of humanity, its own truth that sets it free, not binds and lops and mutilates it. To see God to be the father of every human soul, the ideal father not an inventor of schemes or the upholder of a court etiquette for whose use he has chosen to desecrate the name of justice. To return to Dr. Anderson, I have had little opportunity of knowing his history in India. He returned from it half way down the hill of life, sad, gentle, kind, and rich. Once his sadness came we need not inquire. Some woman out in that fervid land may have darkened his story, darkened it wronglessly it may be with coldness or only with death. But to return home with that wife to accompany him or child to meet him, to sit by his riches like a man over a fire of straws in a Siberian frost, to know that old faces were gone and old hearts changed, that the pattern of things in the heavens had melted away from the face of the earth, that the chill evenings of autumn were settling down into longer and longer nights, and that no hope lay any more beyond the mountains. Surely this was enough to make a gentle-minded man sad, even if the individual sorrows of his history had gathered into gold and purple in the west. I say west, advisedly, for we are journeying like our globe ever towards the east. Death and the west are behind us, ever behind us, and settling into the unchangeable. It was natural that he should be interested in the fine promise of Robert in whom he saw revive the hopes of his own youth, but in a nature of once more robust and more ideal. Where the doctor was refined, Robert was strong. Where the doctor was firm with the firmness he had cultivated, Robert was imperious with an imperiousness time would mellow. Where the doctor was generous and careful at once, Robert gave his might and forgot it. He was rugged in the simplicity of his truthfulness, and his speech betrayed him as altogether of the people. But the doctor knew the whole of the pit whence he had been himself digged. All that would fall away as the spiky shell from the polished chestnut, and be reabsorbed in the growth of the grand cone flowering tree, to stand up in the sun and wind of the years a very alter of incense. It is no wonder I repeat that he loved the boy and longed to further his plans, but he was too wise to overwhelm him with a cataract of fortune instead of blessing him with the merciful deal of progress. The fellow will bring me in for no end of expense, he said, smiling to himself as he drove home in his chariot. The less he means it, the more unconscious of all he will be. There's that Erickson. But that isn't worth thinking of. I must do something for that queer prodigy of his though, that Chargar. The fellow is as good as a dog, and that's saying not a little for him. I wonder if he can learn, or if he takes after his father the marquee you never could spell. Well, it's a comfort to have something to do worth doing. I did think of endowing a hospital, but I'm not sure that it isn't better to endow a good man than a hospital. I'll think about it. I won't say anything about Chargar either till I see how he goes on. I might give him a job though, now and then. But where to fall in with him, prowling about after jobs? He threw himself back in his seat and laughed with a delight he had rarely felt. He was a providence watching over the boys, who expected nothing of him beyond advice for Erickson. Might there not be a providence that equally transcended the vision of men, shaping to nobler ends the blocked out designs of their rough-hewn marbles? His thoughts wandered back to his friend, the Brahmin, who died longing for the absorption into deity which had been the dream of his life. Might not the Brahmin find the grand idea shaped to yet finer issues than his aspiration that dared contemplate? Might he not inherit in the purification of his will such an absorption as should intensify his personality? EARICKSON LIFE For several weeks, during which time Robert and Chargar were his only nurses, they contrived by bridging both rest and labor to give him constant attendance. Chargar went to bed early and got up early, so as to let Robert have a few hours' sleep before his classes began. Robert again slept in the evening after Chargar came home, and made up for the time by reading while he sat by his friend. Mrs. Fivy's attendance was in requisition only for the hours when he had to be at lectures. By the greatest economy of means, consisting of what Chargar brought in by jobbing about the quay and the coach offices, and what Robert had from Dr. Anderson for copying his manuscript, they contrived to procure for Erickson all that he wanted. The shopping of the two boys in their utter ignorance of such delicacies as the doctor told them to get for him, the blunders they made as to the shops at which they were to be bought, and the consultations they held, especially about the preparing of the prescribed nutriment, afforded them many an amusing retrospect in after years. For the house was so full of lodgers that Robert begged Mrs. Fivy to give herself no trouble in the matter. Her conscience, however, was uneasy, and she spoke to Dr. Anderson, but he assured her that she might trust the boys. What cooking they could not manage, she undertook cheerfully and refused to add anything to the rent on Chargar's account. Dr. Anderson watched everything, the two boys as much as his patient. He allowed them to work on, sending only the one that was necessary from his own seller. The moment that supplies should begin to fail or the boys to look troubled, he was ready to do more. About Robert's perseverance he had no doubt, Chargar's faithfulness he wanted to prove. Robert wrote to his grandmother to tell her that Chargar was with him working hard. Her reply was somewhat cold and offended, but was enclosed in a parcel containing all Chargar's garments, and ended with the assurance that as long as he did well, she was ready to do what she could. Few English readers will like Mrs. Falconer, but her grandchild considered her one of the noblest women ever God made, an eye from his account and one of the same mind. Her care was fixed to fill her odorous lamp with deeds of light, and hope that reaps not shame. And if one must choose between the how and the what, let me have the what come of the how what may. I know of a man so sensitive that he shuts his ears to his sister's griefs, because it spoils his digestion to think of them. One evening Robert was sitting by the table in Erickson's room. Dr. Anderson had not called that day, and he did not expect to see him now, for he had never come so late. He was quite at his ease, therefore, and busy with two things at once, when the doctor opened the door and walked in. I think it is possible that he came up quietly with some design of surprising him. He found him, with the stocking on one hand, a darning needle in the other, and a greet book opened before him. Taking no apparent notice of him, he walked up to the bedside, and Robert put away his work. After his interview with his patient was over, the doctor signed to him to follow him to the next room. There's Chargar lay on the rug, already snoring. It was a cold night in December, but he lay in his underclothing with a single blanket round him. Good training for a soldier, said the doctor, and so was your work a minute ago, Robert. I answered Robert coloring a little. I was reading a bit of the anabasis. The doctor smiled a far off sly smile. I think it was rather the catebases, if one might venture to judge from the direction of your labors. Will, answered Robert, what would you have me do? Would you have me let Mr. Erickson go on with holes in the heels of his hose, when I can make them hole and learn my Greek at the same time? Who it's, doctor, did not laugh at me. I was doing their ill. A body may please themselves, which surely is no sin. But it's such a waste of time. Why don't you buy him new ones? Be that's easier said than done. I have enough adieu with my seller as tiz, and if it were not for you, doctor, I do not know what would come of us. For, you see, I have no right to call upon my granny for other folk. There would be nay end to that. But I could lend you money to buy him some stockings. And when would I be able to pay you, do you think, doctor? In another world may be, where the currency might be said different, there would be no possibility of reckoning the rate of exchange. Nay, nay. But I will give you the money, if you like. Nay, nay. You have done enough already, and money thanks. So there's no so easy come by to be wasted, as long as a darn'll do. For by, if you begin with his clays, you would not know where to hold. For it would just be the new cloth upon the old garment. You might as well new-clad him at once. And why not, if I choose, Mr. Falconer? Spare you that at him, and see what you'll get. A look at Woodfessa carrying crow from the sky. I will not have you try that. Some folk's poverty mount be handled just like the sore place, doctor. He cannot wheel-complain a bit, darnin'. He cannot take that ill, repeated Robert, in a tone that showed he yet felt some anxiety on the subject. But new ones. I would not like to be by when he found that wood. Maybe he might take them from a woman, but from a man, body, nay, nay. I'm just darn away. But I'll make them decent enough before I have done with them. A fiddler has fingers. The doctor smiled a pleased smile, but when he got into his carriage again, he laughed heartily. The evening deepened in tonight. Robert thought Erickson was asleep, but he spoke. Who is that at the street door? He said. They were at the top of the house, and there was no window to the street. But Erickson's senses were preternaturally acute, as is often the case in such illnesses. I did not hear anybody answer, Robert. There was somebody, returned Erickson. From that moment he began to be restless, and was more feverish than usual throughout the night. Up to this time he had spoken little, was depressed with the suffering to which he could give no name, not pain, he said, but such that he could rouse no mental effort to meet it. His endurance was passive altogether. This night his brain was more affected. He did not rave, but often wandered, never spoke nonsense, but many words that would have seemed nonsense to ordinary people. To Robert they seemed inspired. His imagination, which was greater than any other of his fine faculties, was so roused that he talked in verse, probably verse composed before and now recalled. He would even pray sometimes in measured lines, and go on murmuring petitions till the words of the murmur became undistinguishable, and he fell asleep. But even in his sleep he would speak, and Robert would listen in awe. For such words, falling from such a man, were to him as dim breaks of colored light from the rainbow walls of the heavenly city. If God were thinking me, said Erickson, ah, but if he be only dreaming me I shall go mad. Erickson's outside was like his own northern climb, dark, gentle, and clear, with gray blue seas, and a sun that seems to shine out of the past and know nothing of the future. But within glowed a volcanic angel of aspiration, fluttering his half-grown wings and ever reaching towards the heights, once all things are visible, and where all passions are safe because true, that is divine. Iceland herself has her heckla. Robert listened with keenest ear, a mist of great meaning hung about the words his friend had spoken. He might speak more. For some minutes he listened in vain, and was turning at last towards his book in hopelessness, when he did speak yet again. Robert's ear soon detected the rhythmic motion of his speech. Come in the glory of thine excellence. Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light, and let the shimmer of thy chariot wheels burn through the cracks of night. So slowly, Lord, to lift myself to thee with hands of toil, climbing the slippery cliff of unheard prayer, lift up a hand among my idle days, one beckoning finger. I will cast aside the clogs of earthly circumstance and run up the broad highways where the countless worlds sit ripening in the summer of thy love. Breathless for fear of losing the word, Robert yet remembered that he had seen something like these words in the papers Erickson had given him to read on the night when his illness began. When he had fallen asleep and silent, he searched and found it. But I prefer giving another of his poems, which Robert read at the same time, revealing another of his moods, when some one of the clouds of holy doubt and questioning love, which so often darkened his sky, did at length, turned forth her silver lining on the night. Song They are blind and they are dead, we will wake them as we go. There are words have not been said, there are sounds they do not know. We will pipe and we will sing, with the music and the spring, set their hearts a-wondering. They are tired of what is old, we will give it voices new, for the half hath not been told of the beautiful and true. Drowsy eyelids shut and sleeping, heavy eyes oppressed with weeping, flashes through the lashes leaping. Ye that have a pleasant voice hither come without delay. Ye will never have a choice, like to that ye have today. Round in wide world we will go, singing through the frost and snow, till the daisies are in blow. Ye that cannot pipe or sing, ye must also come with speed. Ye must come and with ye bring, weighty words and weightier deed. Helping hands and loving eyes, these will make them truly wise. Then will be our paradise. As Robert read the sweetness of the rhythm seized upon him, and almost unconsciously he read the last stanza aloud. Looking up from the paper with the sigh of wonder and delight, there was the pale face of Erickson gazing at him from the bed. He had risen on one arm, looking like a dead man called to life against his will, who found the world he had left already stranger to him than the one into which he had but peeped. Yes, he murmured, I could say that once, it's all gone now, our world is but our moods. He fell back on his pillow, after a little he murmured again. I might fool myself with faith again. So it is better not, I would not be fooled. To believe the false and be happy is the very belly of misery. To believe the true and be miserable is to be true and miserable. If there is no God, let me know it. I will not be fooled. I will not believe in a God that does not exist. Better be miserable, because I am and cannot help it. Oh, God! Yet in his misery he cried upon God. These words came upon Robert with such a shock of sympathy that they destroyed his consciousness for the moment. And when he thought about them, he almost doubted if he had heard them. He rose and approached the bed. Erickson lay with his eyes closed and his face contorted as if by inward pain. Robert put a spoonful of wine to his lips. He swallowed it, opened his eyes, gazed at the boy as if he did not know him, closed them again, and lay still. Some people take comfort from the true eyes of a dog, and a precious thing to the loving heart is the love of even a dumb animal. Why should Sir Walter Scott, who felt the death of camp, his bull terrier, so much that he declined a dinner engagement and consequence, say on the death of his next favorite a greyhound bitch, rest her body since I dare not say soul. Where did he get that dare not? Is it well that the daring of genius should be circumscribed by an unbelief so commonplace as to be capable only of subscription? What comfort then must not such a boy as Robert have been to such a man as Erickson? Often, and often when he was lying asleep as Robert thought, he was watching the face of his watcher. When the human soul is not yet able to receive the vision of the God man, God sometimes, might I not say always, reveals himself or at least gives himself in some human being whose face, whose hands, are the ministering angels of his unacknowledged presence, to keep alive the fire of love on the altar of the heart until God have provided the sacrifice, that is, until the soul is strong enough to draw it from the concealing thicket. Here were two, each thinking that God had forsaken him, or was not to be found by him, and each the very love of God commissioned to tend the other's heart. In each was he present to the other, the one thought himself the happiest of mortals and waiting upon the big brother, whose least smile was joy enough for one day. The other wondered at the unconscious goodness of the boy, and while he gazed at his ruddy brown face, believed in God. For some time after Erickson was taken ill, he was too depressed and miserable to ask how he was cared for, but by slow degrees it dawned upon him that a heart deep and gracious like that of a woman watched over him. True, Robert was uncouth, but his uncouthness was that of a half-fledged angel. The heart of the man and the heart of the boy were drawn close together. Long before Erickson was well, he loved Robert enough to be willing to be indebted to him, and would lie pondering, not how to repay him, but how to return his kindness. How much Robert to ambition to stand well in the eyes of Miss St. John contributed to his progress, I can only imagine, but certainly his administrations to Erickson did not interfere with his Latin and Greek. I venture to think that they advanced them, for difficulty adds to result, as the ramming of the powder sends the bullet further. I have heard indeed that when a carrier wants to help his horse uphill, he sets a boy on his back. Erickson made little direct acknowledgment to Robert, his tones, his gestures, his looks, all thanked him, but he shrunk from words with the madly shame-facedness that belongs to true feeling. He would even assume the authoritative and send him away to his studies. But Robert knew how to hold his own. The relation of elder brother and younger was already established between them. Shargar likewise took his share in the love and the fellowship worshipping in that he believed. And Chapter 9 Book 2 Chapter 10 of Robert Falconer by George Macdonald This Libra Box recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George Macdonald Chapter 10 A Father and a Daughter The presence at the street door, which Erickson's over-acute sense had been aware on a past evening, was that of Mr. Lindsey walking home with bowed back and bowed head from the college library, where he was privileged to sit after hours as long as he pleased over books too big to be comfortably carried home to his cottage. He had called to inquire after Erickson, whose acquaintance he had made in the library, and cultivated, until, almost any Friday evening, Erickson was to be found seated by Mr. Lindsey's parlor fire. As he entered the room that same evening, a young girl raised herself from a low seat by the fire to meet him. There was a faint rosy flush on her cheek, and she held a volume in her hand as she approached her father. They did not kiss. Kisses were not a legal tender in Scotland then. Possibly there had been a depreciation in the value of them since they were. I've been to ask after Mr. Erickson, said Mr. Lindsey. And how is he? asked the girl. Very poorly indeed, answered her father. I am sorry. You'll miss him, Papa. Yes, my dear. Tell Jenny to bring my lamp. Won't you have your tea first, Papa? Oh yes, if it's ready. The kettle has been boiling for a long time, but I wouldn't make the tea till you came in. Mr. Lindsey was an hour later than usual, but Maisie was quite unaware of that. She had been absorbed in her bulk, too much absorbed even to ring for better light than the fire afforded. When her father went to put off his long bifurcated greatcoat, she returned to her seat by the fire and forgot to make the tea. It was a warm snug room, full of dark, old-fashioned spider-length furniture, low-pitched with the bay window, open like an ear to the cries of the German ocean at night, and like an eye during the day to look out upon its wide expanse. This ear or eye was now curtained with dark crimson, and the room in the firelight, with the young girl for a soul to it, affected one like an ancient book in which he reads his own latest thought. Maisie was nothing over the middle height, delicately fashioned, at once slender and round, with extremities neat as buds. Her complexion was fair and her face pale, except when a flush like that of a white rose overspread it. Her cheek was lovelily curved and her face rather short, but at first one could see nothing for her eyes. They were the largest eyes, and their motion reminded one of those of Sordello in the Purgatorio. They seemed too large to move otherwise than with the slow turning like that of the heavens. At first they looked black, but if one ventured inquiry, which was as dangerous as the gaze from the battlements of Elsinor, he found them a not very dark brown. In her face, however, especially when flushed, they had all the effect of what Milton describes as chelsirena fulgore, dea milk bill nero. A wise observer would have been a little troubled in regarding her mouth. The sadness of a morbid sensibility hovered about it, the sign of an imagination wrought upon from the center of self. Her lips were neither thin nor compressed. They closed lightly and were richly curved, but there was a mobility almost tremulous about the upper lip that gave sign of the possibility of such an oscillation of feeling as might cause the whole fabric of her nature to rot dangerously. The moment her father re-entered, she started from her stool on the rug and proceeded to make the tea. Her father took no notice of her neglect, but drew a chair to the table, helped himself to a piece of oat cake, hastily loaded it with as much butter as it could well carry, and while eating it, forgot it, and everything else in the absorption of a volume he had brought in with him from his study, in which he was tracing out some genealogical thread of which he fancied he had got a hold. Misey was very active now and lost the expression of far-offness, which had hitherto characterized her countenance. Till, having poured out the tea, she too plunged at once into her novel, and, like her father, forgot everything and everybody near her. Mr. Lindsay was a mild, gentle man, whose face and hair seemed to have grown gray together. He was very tall and stooped much. He had a mouth of much sensibility and clear blue eyes whose light was rarely shed upon anyone within reach, except his daughter. They were so constantly bent downwards, either on the road as he walked or on his book as he sat. He had been educated for the church, but had never risen above the position of a Paris schoolmaster. He had little or no impulse to utterance, was shy, genial, and save in reading indolent. Ten years before this point of my history, he had been taken up by an active lawyer in Edinburgh from information accidentally supplied by Mr. Lindsay himself, as the next heir to a property to which claim was laid by the head of a county family of wealth. Probabilities were altogether in his favour when he gave up the contest upon the offer of a comfortable annuity from the disputant. To leave his schooling and his possible estate together and sit down comfortably by his own fireside, with the means of buying books and within reach of a good old library, that of King's College, by preference, was to him the sum of all that was desirable. The income offered him was such that he had no fear of laying aside enough for his only child, Maisie, but both were so ill-fitted for saving. He from looking into the past, she from looking into what shall I call it? I can only think of negatives, what was neither past, present, nor future, neither material, nor eternal, neither imaginative in any true sense, nor actual in any sense, that up to the present hour there was nothing in the bank and only the money foreign pending needs in the house. He could not be called a man of learning, he was only a great bookworm. For his reading lay all in the nebulous regions of history. Old family records, wherever he could lay hold upon them, were his favourite dishes. Old musty books that looked as if they knew something everybody else had forgotten, made his eyes gleam and his white taper fingered hand tremble with eagerness. With such a book in his grasp, he saw something ever beckoning him on, a dimly precious discovery, a wonderful fact, just the shape of some missing fragment in the mosaic of one of his pictures of the past. To tell the truth, however, is discoveries seldom rounded themselves into pictures, though many fragments of the minutely dissected map would find their places, whereupon he rejoins like a mild giant refreshed with soda water. But I have already said more about him than his place justifies, therefore although I could gladly linger over the portrait I will leave it. He had taught his daughter next to nothing, being his child he had the vague feeling that she inherited his wisdom, and that what he knew she knew. So she sat reading novels, generally trashy ones, while he knew no more of what was passing in her mind than of what the admirable Crichton might at the moment be disputing with the angels. I would not have my reader suppose that Maize's mind was corrupted. It was so simple and childlike, leaning to what was pure and looking up to what was noble, that anything directly bad in the bulk she happened, for it was all haphazard. To read, glided over her as a black cloud may glide over a landscape, leaving it sunny as before. I cannot therefore say, however, that she was nothing the worse. If the darkening of the sun keep the fruits of the earth from growing, the earth is surely the worse, though it be blackened by no deposit of smoke. And where good things do not grow, the wild and possibly noxious will grow more freely. There may be no harm in the yellow tansy, there is much beauty in the red poppy, but they are not good for food. The result in Maize's case would be this, not that she would call evil good and good evil, but that she would take the beautiful for the true and the outer shows of goodness for goodness itself. Not the worst result, but bad enough, and involving an awful amount of suffering and possibly of defilement. He who thinks to climb the hill of happiness thus will find himself floundering in the blackest bog that lies at the foot of its precipices. I say he, not she, advisedly, all well acknowledged of the woman. It is as true of the man, though he may get out easier. Will he? I say, checking myself. I doubt it much. In the world's eye, yes, but in God's, let the question remain unanswered. When he had eaten his toast and drunk his tea, apparently without any enjoyment, Mr. Lindsay rose with his bulk in his hand and withdrew to his study. He had not long left the room when Maize was startled by a loud knock at the back door, which opened on a lane leading along the top of the hill. But she had almost forgotten it again when the door of the room opened, and a gentleman entered without any announcement. For Jenny had never heard of the custom. When she saw him, Maize started from her seat and stood in visible embarrassment. The color went and came on her lovely face and her eyelids grew very heavy. She had never seen the visitor before, whether he had never seen her before, I cannot certainly say. She felt herself trembling in his presence while he advanced with perfect composure. He was a man no longer young, but in the full strength and show of manhood, the Baron of Rothy. Since the time of my first description of him, he had grown a mustache, which improved his countenance greatly by concealing his upper lip with its tusky curves. On a girl like Maize with an imagination so cultivated, and with no opportunity of comparing its fancies with reality, such a man would make an instant impression. I beg your pardon, Miss Lindsay, I presume. For intruding upon you so abruptly, I expected to see your father, not one of the graces. She blushed all the color of her blood now. The Baron was quite enough like the hero of whom she had just been reading to admit of her imagination jumbling the two. Her book fell, he lifted it and laid it on the table. She could not speak even to thank him. Poor Maize was scarcely more than sixteen. May I wait here till your father is informed of my visit? He asked. Her only answer was to drop again upon her low stool. Now Jenny had left it to Maize to acquaint her father with the fact of the Baron's presence. But before she had time to think of the necessity of doing something, he had managed to draw her into conversation. He was as great a hypocrite as ever walked the earth, although he flattered himself that he was none because he never pretended to cultivate that which he despised, namely religion. But he was a hypocrite nevertheless. For the falser he knew himself, the more honor he judged it to persuade women of his truth. It is unnecessary to record the slight graceful, marvellous talk into which he drew Maize, and by which he both bewildered and bewitched her. But at length she rose, admonished by her inborn divinity to seek her father. As she passed in, the Baron took her hand and kissed it. She might well tremble, even such contact was terrible. Why? Because there was no love in it. When the sense of beauty which God had given him that he might worship awoke in Lord Rathi, he did not worship but devoured, and he might as he thought possess. The poison of Asps was under those lips. His kiss was as a kiss from the grave's mouth, for his throat was an open cephalcher. This was all in the past, reader. Baron Rathi was a foam flake of the court of the Prince Regent. There are no such men nowadays. It is a shame to speak of such, and therefore they are not. Decency has gone so far to abolish virtue. Would to God that a writer could be decent and honest? Saint Paul counted it a shame to speak of some things, and yet he did speak of them, because those to whom he spoke did them. Lord Rathi had, in five minutes, so deeply interested Mr. Lindsay in a question of genealogy that he begged his lordship to call again in a few days, when he hoped to have some result of research to communicate. One of the antiquarian's weaknesses, cause and result both of his favorite pursuits, was an excessive reverence for rank. Had its claims been founded on mediated revelation, he could not have honored it more. Hence, when he communicated to his daughter the name of their visitor, it was, with bated breath and whispering humbleness, which deepened greatly the impression made upon her by the presence and conversation of the Baron. Misey was in danger. Shargar was late that evening, for he had a job that obtained him. As he handed over his money to Robert, he said, I saw Black Geordie the night again, standing at the back door, and Jock Mitchell, upon Red Rory, hobbin' him. What's Jock Mitchell, asked Robert. My brother, Sandy's ill-farred room, answered Shargar. Whatever mischief Sandy's up till, Jock comes in, in the head or tail of it. I wonder what he's up till new. Faith, nay good, but I, I like war to meet Sandy by himself upon the reeked devil of his. Man, it's awful when Black Geordie turns the white of his eye in the white of his teeth upon ye. It's all the white there is about him. It's not your brother in the army, Shargar. How did I? They tell me he was at Waterloo. He's a Cornell or something like that. What tells ye all that? My mother, Wiles, answered Shargar. And Chapter 10, Book 2, Chapter 11 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Robert Falconer by George McDonald. Chapter 11, Robert Svau. Erickson was recovering slowly. He could sit up in bed the greater part of the day and talk about getting out of it. He was able to give Robert an occasional help with his Greek, and to listen with pleasure to his violin. The night watching grew less needful, and Erickson would have dispensed with it willingly, but Robert would not yet consent. But Erickson had seasons of great depression, during which he could not bear with music or listen to the words of the New Testament. During one of these, Robert had begun to read a chapter to him in the faint hope that he might draw some comfort from it. Shut the book, he said. If it were the word of God to men, it would have brought its own proof with it. Are ye sure it has not? asked Robert. No, answered Erickson. But why should a fellow that would give his life? That's not much, but it's all I've got. To believe in God, not be able. Only I confess that God in the New Testament wouldn't satisfy me. There's no help. I must just die and go and see. She'll be left without anybody. What does it matter? She would not mind a word I said, and the God they talk about will just let her take her own way. He always does. He had closed his eyes and forgotten that Robert heard him. He opened them now and fixed them on him with an expression that seemed to ask, have I been saying anything that I ought not? Robert knelt by the bedside and said slowly, was strongly repressed emotion. Mr. Erickson, I swear by God, if there be one, that if ye die, I'll take up what ye me a hind ye. If there be anybody you want, look it after, I'll look after her. I'll do what I can for her to the best of my ability. So help me, God. I save in what I mount due for my own Father if he be in life to bring him back to the right way, if there be a right way. So ye can think about whether there's anything ye would like to confide to me. There's something grew in Erickson's eyes as Robert spoke. Before he had finished, they beamed on the boy. I think there must be a God somewhere after all, he said, half soliloquizing. I should be sorry you hadn't a God, Robert. Why should I wish it for your sake? How could I want one for myself if there never was one? If a God had nothing to do with my making, why should I feel that nobody but God can set things right? But he must be such a God as I could imagine, altogether absolutely true and good. If we came out of nothing, we could not invent the idea of a God, could we, Robert? Nothing would be our God. If we come from God, nothing is more natural, nothing so natural as to want him, and when we haven't got him to try to find him. What if he should be in us after all and working in us this way? Just this very way of crying out after him. Mr. Erickson, cried Robert, did not say any more that you do not believe in God, you do believe in him, more I'm thinking nor anybody that I know, except maybe my granny. Only hers is the some queer kind of a God to believe in. I did not think I could ever manage to believe in him myself. Erickson sighed and was silent. Robert remained kneeling by his bedside happier, clearer headed and more hopeful than he had ever been. What if all was right at the heart of things, right, even as a man if he could understand, would say was right, right so that a man who understood in part could believe it to be ten times more right than he did understand? Vaguely, dimly, yet joyfully, Robert saw something like this in the possibility of things. His heart was full and the tears filled his eyes. Erickson spoke again. I have felt like that often for a few moments, he said, but always something would come and blow it away. I remember one spring morning, but if you will bring me that bundle of papers I will show you what, if I can find it, will let you understand. Robert Rose went to the cupboard and brought the pile of loose leaves. Erickson turned them over and Robert was glad to see, now and then, sorted them a little. At length he drew out a sheet, carelessly written, carelessly corrected, and hard to read. It is not finished, or likely to be, he said, as he put the paper in Robert's hand. Won't you read it to me yourself, Mr. Erickson, suggested Robert. I would sooner put it in the fire, he answered. It's fate, anyhow. I don't know why I haven't burnt them all long ago. Rubbish and diseased rubbish. Read it yourself or leave it. Eagerly Robert took it and read. The following was the best he could make of it. Oh, that a wind would call from the depths of the leafless wood. Oh, that a voice would fall on the ear of my solitude. Far away is the sea with its sound and its spirit tone. Over it white clouds flee, but I am alone, alone. Straight and steady and tall, the trees stand on their feet. Fast by the old stone wall, the moss grows green and sweet. But my heart is full of fears, for the sun shines far away, and they look in my face through tears, and the light of a dying day. My heart was glad last night, as I pressed it with my palm. Its throb was airy and light, as it sang some spirit song. But it died away in my breast, as I wandered forth today, as a bird sat dead on its nest, while others sang on the spray. A weary heart of mine, is there ever a truth for thee? Will ever a sun outshine, but the sun that shines on me? Away, away through the air the clouds and the leaves are blown, and my heart hath need of prayer, for it siteth alone, alone. And Robert looked with sad reverence at Erickson, nor ever thought that there was one who, in the face of the fact, and in recognition of it, had dared say, Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your father. The sparrow does fall, but he who sees it, is yet the father. And we only know the fall, and not the sparrow.