 Book 1, Chapter 17 of Robert Falconer by George MacDonald. Granny's first action every evening, the moment the boys entered the room, was to glance up at the clock that she might see whether they had arrived in reasonable time. This was not pleasant because it admonished Robert how impossible it was for him to have a lesson on his own violin so long as the visit to body fold lasted. If they had only been allowed to sleep at Rostadun, what a universe of freedom would have been theirs. As it was, he had but two hours to himself paired at both ends in the middle of the day. Doble-san might have given him a lesson at that time, but he did not dare to carry his instrument through the streets of Rostadun, for the preceding would be certain to come to his grandmother's ears. Several days passed indeed before he made up his mind as to how he was to reap any immediate benefit from the recovery of the violin. For after he had made up his mind to run the risk of successive midday solos in the old factory, he was not prepared to carry the instrument through the streets or be seen entering the place with it, but the factory lay at the opposite corner of a quadrangle of gardens, the largest of which belonged to itself. In the corner of this garden touched the corner of Captain Forsythe, which had formerly belonged to Andrew Falconer. It had a door made in the walls at the point of junction, so that he could go from his house to his business across his own property. If this door were not hooked and Robert could pass without a fence, what a northwest passage it would be for him. The little garden belonging to his grandmother's house had only a slight wooden fence to divide it from the other, and even in this fence there was a little gate. He would only have to run along Captain Forsythe's top walk to reach the door. The blessed thought came to him as he lay in his bed at body fold. He would attempt the passage the very next day. With his violin in its paper under his arm, he sped like a hair from gate to door, and it not even latched, only pushed to and rusted into such rest as it was dangerous to the hinges to disturb. He opened it however without any accident and passed through, then closing it behind him took his way more leisurely through the tangled grass of his grandmother's property. When he reached the factory he judged it prudent to search out a more secret nook, one more full of silence that is once the sounds would be less certain to reach the ears of the passersby, and came upon a small room near the top which had been the manager's bedroom and which as he judged from what seemed the signs of ancient occupation, a cloak hanging on the wall and the ashes of a fire lining in the grate, nobody had entered for years. It was the safest place in the world. He undid his instrument carefully, tuned its strings tenderly, and soon found that his former facility, such as it was, had not ebbed away beyond recovery. Hastening back as he came he was just in time for his dinner, and narrowly escaped encountering Betty in the trance. He had been tempted to leave the instrument, but no one could tell what might happen, and to doubt would be to be miserable with anxiety. He did the same for several days without interruption, not however without observation. When returning from his fourth visit he opened the door between the gardens, he started back in the smay, for there stood the beautiful lady. Robert hesitated for a moment whether to fly or speak. He was a lowland country boy and therefore rude of speech, but he was three parts a kelp and those who know the address of the Irish or the Highlanders know how much that involves as to manners and bearing. He advanced the next instant and spoke. I beg your pardon, ma'am. I thought nobody would see me. I have not done nay ill. I had not the least suspicion of it, I assure you, returned Miss St. John. But tell me, what makes you go through here always at the same hour with the same parcel under your arm? You will not tell anybody will you, ma'am, if I tell you? Miss St. John amused and interested besides in the contrast between the boy's oddly noble face and good bearing on the one hand and on the other the drawl of his bluntly articulated speech and the coarseness of his tone, both seeming to her in the extreme of provincialism promised, and Robert entranced by all the qualities of her voice and speech and nothing disenchanted by the near view of her lovely face, confided in her at once. I came upon my grandfather's fiddle, but my grandmother thinks the fiddle is no good, and say she took and she had it. But I found it again, and I dare not play it in the hoose, though my granny is in the country, for Betty hearing me and telling her, and so I go on to the ol' factory there. It belongs to my granny and so does the garden, and this hoose and yard was once my father's, and so he had that door through they tell me, and I thought if I should be open it would be a fine thing for me to hold folk on seeing me, but it was very ill-bred to you ma'am, I can, to come through your yard on spirit leave. I beg your pardon ma'am, and I'll just go on back and ruin by the road. This is my fiddle I have beneath my arm, but to put back the case of its war it was a form I granny's bed to hold her on kent as she had tinted the grub of it. Certainly Miss St. John could not have understood the half of the words Robert used, but she understood his story notwithstanding. Her self and enthusiast in music, her sympathies were at once engaged for the awkward boy who was thus trying to steal an entrance into the fairy halls of sound. But she forbore any further allusion to the violin for the present, and contented herself with the sure and Robert that he was hardly welcome to go through the garden as often as he pleased. She accompanied her words with a smile that made Robert feel not only that she was the most beautiful of all princesses in fairy tales, but that she had presented him with something beyond price in the most self-denying manner. He took off his cap, thanked her with much heartiness, if not with much polish, and hastened to the gate of his grandmother's little garden. A few years later, an encounter might have spoiled his dinner. I have to record no such evil result of the adventure. With Miss St. John, music was the highest form of human expression, as must often be the case with those whose feeling is much in advance of their thought, and to whom therefore what may be called mental sensation is the highest known condition. Music to such is poetry in solution, and generates that infinite atmosphere common to both musician and poet, which the latter fills with shining worlds. But if my reader wishes to follow out for himself the idea here and suggested, he must be careful to make no confusion between those who feel musically or think poetically and the musician or the poet. One who can only play the music of others, however exquisitely, is not a musician, any more than one who can read verse to the satisfaction, or even expand it to the enlightenment of the poet himself, is therefore a poet. When Miss St. John would worship God, it was in music that she found the chariot of fire in which to ascend heavenward. Hence music was the divine thing in the world for her, and to find anyone loving music humbly and faithfully was to find a brother or sister believer. But she had been so often disappointed in her expectations from those she took to be such, that of late she had become less sanguine. Still, there was something about this boy that roused once more her musical hopes, and however she may have restrained herself from the full indulgence of them, certain it is that the next day when she saw Robert pass, this time leisurely, along the top of the garden, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and allowing him time to reach his den followed him, in the hope of finding out whether or not he could play. I do not know what proficiency the boy had attained, very likely not much, for a man can feel the music of his own bow or of his own lines, long before anyone else can discover it. He had already made a path, not exactly worn one, but trampled one through the neglected grass, and Miss St. John had no difficulty in finding his entrance to the factory. She felt a little eerie, as Robert would have called it, when she passed into the waste, silent place. For, besides the wasteness and the silence, motionless machines have a look of death about them, at least when they bear such signs of disuse as those that filled these rooms. Hearing no violins, she waited for a while in the ground floor of the building, but still hearing nothing, she ascended to the first floor, here likewise, all with silence. She hesitated, but at length ventured up the next stair, beginning however to feel a little troubled as well as eerie. The silence was so obstinately persistent. Was it possible that there was no violin in that brown paper? But that boy could not be a liar. Passing shelves piled up with the stores of old thread. She still went on, led by curiosity stronger than her gathering fear. At last she came to a little room, the door of which was open, and there she saw Robert lying on the floor, with his head in a pool of blood. Now Mary St. John was both brave and kind, and therefore though not insensible to the fact that she too must be in danger or where violins had been used to a boy, she said about assisting him at once. His face was death-like, but she did not think he was dead. She drew him out into the passage, for the room was close, and did all she could to recover him. But for some time he did not even breathe. At last his lips moved, and he murmured, Sandy! Sandy! You've broken my bonny leddie! Then he opened his eyes, and seen a face to dream about, bending in kind consternation over him, closed them again with a smile and a sigh as if to prolong his dream. The blood now came fast into his forsaken cheeks, and began to flow again from the wound in his head. The lady bounded up with her handkerchief. After a little he rose, though with difficulty, and stared wildly about him saying with imperfect articulation, Father! Father! Then he looked at Miss St. John with the kind of dazed inquiry in his eyes, tried several times to speak and could not. Can you walk at all? asked Miss St. John, supporting him, for she was anxious to leave the place. Yes, ma'am, wheeling off, he answered. Come along then, I will help you home. Nay, nay, he said, as if he had just recalled something. Do not mind me, run home, ma'am, or he'll see. Who will see me? Robert stared more wildly, put his hand to his head, and made no reply. She half-led, half-supported him down the stairs, as far as the first landing, when he cried out in a tone of anguish. My bonny leddie! What is it? asked Miss St. John, thinking he meant her. My fiddle, my fiddle, she'll be all in bits, he answered, and turned to go up again. Sit down here, said Miss St. John, and I'll fetch it. Though not without some tremor, she darted back to the room. Then she turned faint for the first time, but determinedly, supporting herself, she looked about, saw a brown paper parcel on a shelf, took it, and hurried out with a shutter. Robert stood leaning against the wall. He stretched out his hands, eagerly. Give me her, give me her. You had better let me carry it, you are not able. Name, name, ma'am, you did not ken who easy she is to hurt. Oh, yes I do, returned Miss St. John smiling, and Robert could not withstand the smile. Well, take care of her as you would of your own self, ma'am, he said, yielding. He was not much better, and before he had been two minutes in the open air, insisted that he was quite well. When they reached Captain Forsythe's garden, he again held out his hands for his violin. No, no, said his new friend, you wouldn't have Betty see you like that, would you? No, ma'am, but I'll put in the fiddle at my own window, and she saw not have a chance of seeing it, answered Robert, not understanding her. For though he felt a good deal of pain, he had no idea what a dreadful appearance he presented. Don't you know that you have a wound on your head? Asked Miss St. John. Nay, have I? Said Robert, putting up his hand. But I'm on gone, there's nay help for it, he added. If I could only win to my own room on Betty seeing me, eh, ma'am, I have spoiled all your Bonnie Goon, that's a sore vex. Never mind it, returned Miss St. John smiling, it is of no consequence, but you must come with me. I must see what I can do for your head, poor boy. Eh, ma'am, but you are kind. If you speak like that, you'll garm me great. Nobody ever spoke to me like that before, maybe you knew my mama, you're so like her. This word mama was the only remnant of her that lingered in his speech. Had she lived, he would have spoken very differently. They were now walking towards the house. No, I did not know your mama. Is she dead? Long sign, ma'am. And so they tell me is yours. Yes, and my father too. Your father is alive, I hope. Robert made no answer, Miss St. John turned. The boy had a strange look and seemed struggling with something in his throat. She thought he was going to faint again and hurried him into the drawing room. Her aunt had not yet left her room and her uncle was out. Sit down, she said so kindly, and Robert sat down on the edge of a chair. Then she left the room but presently returned with a little brandy. There, she said, offering the glass, that will do you good. What is it, ma'am? Brandy, there's water in it, of course. I dare not touch it. Brandy could not abide me to touch it. So determined was he that Miss St. John was forced to yield. Perhaps he wondered that the boy who would deceive his grandmother about a violin should be so immovable in regarding her pleasure in the matter of a needful medicine. But in this fact I began to see the very falconer of my manhood's worship. Eh, ma'am. If you would place something upon her, he resumed pointing to the piano, which, although he had never seen one before, he at once recognized by some hidden mental operation as the source of the sweet sounds heard at the window, it would do me more good than a whole bottle of brandy or wasky either. How do you know that? Asked Miss St. John proceeding to sponge the wound. Cos many's the time I have stood there in the street harkening. Double Sandy says that you played just as if you were my grandfather's fiddle herself turned into the Bonnie's crater ever God made. How did you get such a terrible cut? She had removed the hair and found that the injury was severe. The boy was silent. She glanced round in his face. He was staring as if he saw nothing, heard nothing. She would try again. Did you fall or how did you cut your head? Yes, yes ma'am. I fell, he answered hastily with an air of relief and possibly with some tone of gratitude for the suggestion of a true answer. What made you fall? Out of silence again. She felt a kind of turn. I do not know another word to express what I mean. The boy must have fits and either could not tell or was ashamed to tell what had befallen him. Thereafter she too was silent and Robert thought she was offended. Possibly he felt a change in the touch of her fingers. Ma'am, I would like to tell you. He said, but I darn not. Oh, never mind. She returned kindly. Would you promise me to tell nobody? I don't want to know, she answered, confirmed in her suspicion and at the same time ashamed of the alteration of feeling which the discovery had occasioned. An uncomfortable silence followed broken by Robert. If you d not pleased with me, ma'am, he said, I cannot buy you to go on with sicken a job as that. How Miss St. John could have understood him, I cannot think, but she did. Oh, very well, she answered smiling, just as you please. Perhaps you had better take this piece of plaster to Betty and ask her to finish the dressing for you. Robert took the plaster mechanically and sick at heart and speechless rose to go, forgetting even his bonny laddie in his grief. You d better take your violin with you, said Miss St. John, urged to the cruel experiment by a strong desire to see what the strange boy would do. He turned. The tears were streaming down his odd faith. They went to her heart and she was bitterly ashamed of herself. Come along to sit down again. I only wanted to see what you would do. I am very sorry, she said in a tone of kindness, such as Robert had never imagined. He sat down instantly, saying, ah, ma'am, it s sore to bide, meaning no doubt the conflict between his inclination to tell her all and his duty to be silent. The dressing was soon finished, his hair combed down over it and Robert looking once more respectable. Now I think that will do, said his nurse. Ah, thank you, ma'am, answered Robert Rising. When I am able to play upon the fiddle as well as you play upon the piano, I will come and play at your window Ilkenite as long as you like to harken. She smiled and he was satisfied. He did not dare again ask her to play to him, but she said of herself, now I will play something to you if you like, and he resumed his seat devoutly. When she had finished the lovely little air which sounded to Robert like the touch of her hands and her breath on his forehead, she looked around and was satisfied from the rapt expression of the boy's countenance that at least he had plenty of musical sensibility. As if to spoil the volition he stood motionless till she said, now you had better go, or Betty will miss you. Then he made her a bow in which awkwardness and grace curiously mingled, and taking up his precious parcel and holding it to his bosom as if it had been a child for whom he felt an access of tenderness. He slowly left the room in the house. Not even to Shargard did he communicate his adventure, and he went no more to the deserted factory to play there. Fate had again interposed between him and his bonny lady. When he reached bodyfall he fancied his grandmother's eyes and watched full of him than usual, and he strove the mortal resist the weariness and even faintness that urged him to go to bed. Whether he was able to hide as well, a certain trouble that cladded his spirit, I doubt. His wound he did manage to keep a secret thanks to the care of Miss St. John who had dressed it with court plaster. When he woke to next morning it was with the consciousness of having seen something strange the night before, and only when he found that he was not in his own room at his grandmother's was he convinced that it must have been a dream and no vision. For in the night he had awaked there as he thought and the moon was shining with such clearness that although it did not shine into his room he could see the face of the clock and that the hands were both together at the top. Close by the clocks stood the bureau with its end against the partition forming the head of his granny's bed. A moment once he saw a tall man in a blue coat and bright buttons about to open the lid of the bureau. The same moment he saw little elderly man in a brown coat in a brown wig by his side who sought to remove his hand from the lock. Next appeared a huge stalwart figure and shabby old tartans and laid his hand on the head of each. But the wonder widened and grew. For now came a stately Highlander with his broadsword by his side and an eagle's feather on its bonnet who laid his hand on the other Highlander's arm. When Albert looked in the direction whence this had appeared the head of his granny's bed had vanished and a wild hillside covered with stones and heathers sloped away into the distance. Over it passed man after man each with an ancestral heir while on the grey sea to the left galleys covered with Norsemen tore up the white foam and dashed one after the other out to the strand. How long he gazed he did not know but when he withdrew his eyes from the extended scene there stood the figure of his father still trying to open the lid of the bureau his grandfather resisting him the blind Piper with his hand on the head of both and the stately chief with his hand on the Piper's arm. Then a mist of forgetfulness gathered over the hall till it last he awoke himself in the little wooden chamber at body-fold and not in the visioned room. Doubtless his loss of blood the day before had something to do with the dream or vision whichever the reader may choose to consider it. He rose and after a good breakfast found himself very little the worse and forgot all about his dream till a circumstance which took place not long after recalled it vividly to his mind. The enchantment of body-fold soon wore off the boys had no time to enter and do the full enjoyment of country ways because of those weary lessons over the getting of which Mrs. Falconer kept as strict a watch as ever while to Robert the evening journey his violin and Miss St. John left at Rothedon grew more than tame. The return was almost as happy an event to him as the first going. Now he could resume his lessons with the shoemaker. With Shargar it was otherwise the freedom for so much longer from Mrs. Falconer's eyes was in itself so much of a positive pleasure that the walk twice a day the fresh air and the sense and sounds of the country only came as supplementary. But I do not believe the boy even then had so much happiness as when he was beaten and starved by his own mother and Robert growing more and more absorbed in his own thoughts and pursuits paid him less and less attention as the weeks went on till Shargar at length judged it for a time an evil day on which he had first slept under old Ronald Falconer's kilt and Chapter 17 Book 1 Chapter 18 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald This Libra Vox recording is in the public domain Robert Falconer by George McDonald Chapter 18 Nature Puts in Acclaim Before the day of return arrived Robert had taken care to remove the violin from his bedroom and carry it once more to its old retreat in Shargar's Garrett The very first evening however that Granny again spent in her own armchair he hide from the house as soon as it grew dusk and made his way with his brown paper parcel to Sandy Elchenders Entering the narrow passage from which his shop door opened and hearing him hammering away at a soul he stood and unfolded his treasure then drew a low sigh from her with his bow and awaited the result He heard the lapstone fall thundering on the floor and like a spider from his cavern doble Sandy appeared in the door with the bend leather in one hand and the hammer in the other Lord's sake man have you gotten her again just a grub of her he cried dropping leather and hammer nene returned Robert retreating towards the outer door he mount swear upon her that when I want her I shall have her on demer or I shall not let you lay rosette upon her I swear it Robert I swear it upon her said the shoemaker hurriedly stretching out both his hands as if to receive some human being into his embrace Robert placed the violin in those grimy hands a look of heavenly delight dawned over the hearse suit and dirt besmeared countenance which drooped into tenderness as he drew the bow across the instrument and wowed from her a thin wail as of sorrow at their long separation he then retreated into his den and was soon sunk in a trance deaf to everything but the violin from which no entreaties of Robert who longed for a lesson could rouse him so that he had to go home grievously disappointed and unrewarded for the risk he had run adventuring the stolen visit next time however he fared better and he contrived so well that from the middle of June to the end of August he had two lessons a week mostly upon the afternoon of holidays for these his master thought himself well paid by the use of the instrument between the two instruments occasionally he saw Miss St. John in the garden and once or twice met her in the town but her desire to find him a pupil had been greatly quenched by her unfortunate conjecture as to the cause of his accident she had however gone so far as to mention the subject to her aunt who assured her that old Mrs. Falconer would as soon consent to his being taught gambling as a music order to when she met him there was no further communication between them the Robert would often dream of waking from a swim and finding his head lying on her lap and her lovely face bending over him full of kindness and concern by the way Robert cared nothing for poetry Virgil was too troublesome to be enjoyed and in English he had met with nothing but the dried leaves and gum flowers of the last century Miss Letty once lent him the lady of the lake but before he had read the first canto through his grandmother later hands upon it and without saying a word dropped it behind a loose skirting board in the pantry where the mice soon made it a ruin said to behold for Miss Letty having heard from the woeful Robert of its strange disappearance and guessing its cause applied to Mrs. Falconer for the volume who forthwith with tongs aiding extracted it from its hole the fate of embarrassment held it up like a drowned kitten before the eyes of Miss Letty intending thereby no doubt to impress her with the fate of all seducing spirits that should attempt an entrance into her kingdom Miss Letty only burst into Mary laughter over its fate so the load of poetry failed for the present from Robert's life nor did it matter much for had he not his violin I have I think already indicated that his grandfather had been a linen manufacturer although that trade had ceased his family had still retained the bleachery belonging to it commonly called the bleach field devoting it now to the service of those large calico manufacturers which had ruined the trade in linen and to the whitening of such yarn as the country housewives still spun at home and the web they got woven of it in private looms to Robert and Shargar it was a wondrous pleasure when the pile of linen which the week had accumulated at the office under the gale room was on Saturday he tied upon the base of a broad wheeled cart to get up on it and be carried to the sed bleach field which lay along the bank of the river soft laid and high born gazing into the blue sky they traversed the streets in a holiday triumph and although once arrived the manager did not fail to get some labor out of them yet the storm amusement was endless the great wheel which drove the whole machinery the plash mill or more properly walk mill a word Robert derived from the resemblance of the mallets to two huge feet and of their motion to walking with the water flashing and squirting from the blows of their heels the beetles stundering in the arpeggio upon the huge cylinder around which the white cloth was wound which was haunted in its turn in season the pleasure of the water itself was inexhaustible here sweeping in a mass along the race they're divided into branches and hurring through the walls of the various houses here sliding through a wooden channel across the floor to fall into the river in a half concealed cataract they're bubbling up through the bottom of a huge wooden cave or vat they're resting placid in another here gurgling along a spout they're flowing in a narrow canal through the green expanse of the well-mown bleach field or lifted from it in narrow curved wooden scoops like fairy canoes with long handles and flunging showers over the outspread yarn the water was an endless delight it is strange how some individual broidery or figure upon nature's garment will delight a boy long before he has ever looked nature in the face or begun to love herself but Robert was soon to become dimly conscious of a life within these things a life not the less real that its operations on his mind had been long unrecognized on the grassy bank of the gently flowing river at the other edge of whose level the little canal squabbled along and on the grassy bray which rose immediately from the canal were stretched close behind each other with scarce a stripe of green betwixt the long white webs of linen fastened down to the soft mossy ground with wooden pegs whose tops were twisted into their edges strangely would they bellow in the wind sometimes like sea waves frozen and enchanted flat seeking to rise and wallow in the wind with conscious depth and whelming mass but generally they lay supines saturated with light at its cleansing power falconers jubilation in the white and green of a little boat as we lay one bright morning on the banks of the Thames Richmond and Twickenham led to such a description of the bleach field that I can write about it as if I had known it myself one Saturday afternoon in the end of July when the western sun was hotter than at midday we went down to the lower end of the field where the river was confined by a dam and plunged from the bank into deep water after a swim of half an hour he ascended the higher part of the field and laid down upon a broad web to bask in the sun in his ears was the hush rather than rush of the water over the dam the occasional murmur of a belt of trees that skirted the border of the field and the dull continuous sound of the beetles at their work below like a persistent growl of thunder on the horizon had Robert possessed a copy of Robinson Crusoe or had his grandmother not cast a lady of the lake mistaking it for an idol if not to the moles and the bats yet to the mice and the black beetles he might have been lying reading it blind and deaf to the face and the voice of nature and years might have passed before a response awoke in his heart it is good that children of faculty as distinguished from capacity should not have too many books to read or too much of early listening the increase of examinations in our country will increase its capacity and diminish its faculty we shall have more compilers or thinkers more modifiers and completers and fewer inventors he laid gazing up into the depth of the sky rendered deeper and bluer by the masses of white cloud that hung almost motionless below it until he felt a kind of bodily fear lest he should fall off the face of the round earth into the abyss a gentle wind laden with pine odors from the sun heated trees behind him flapped its light wing in his face the humanity of the world smote his heart the great sky towered up over him and its divinity entered his soul a strange longing after something he knew not nor could name awoke within him followed by the pang of a sudden fear that there was no such thing as that which he sought that it was all a fancy of his own spirit and then the voice of Shargar broke the spell calling to him from afar to come and see a great salmon that laid by a stone in the water but once aroused a feeling was never stilled the desire never left him something growing even to a passion that was relieved only by a flood of tears strange as it may sound to those who have never thought of such things saving connection with Sundays and bibles and churches and sermons that which was now working in falconer's mind was the first dull and faint movement of the greatest need that the human heart possesses in the need of the god-man there must be truth in the scent of that pinewood someone must mean it there must be a glory in those heavens that depends not upon our imagination some power greater than they must well in them some spirit must move in that wind that haunts us with the kind of human sorrow some soul must look up to us from the eye of that starry flower it must be something human else not to us divine little did Robert think that such was his need that his soul was searching after one whose form was constantly presented to him but is constantly obscured and made unlovely by the words without knowledge spoken in the religious assemblies of the land that he was longing without knowing it on the Saturday for that from which on the Sunday he would be repelled without knowing it years passed before he drew nigh to the knowledge of what he sought for weeks the mood broken by the voice of his companion did not return though the forms of nature were henceforth full of a pleasure he had never known before he loved the grass the water was more gracious to him he would leave his bed early that he might gaze on the clouds of the east with their borders gold blasted with sunrise he would linger in the fields that the amber and purple and green and red of the sunset might not escape after the sun unseen and as long as he felt the mystery lay before and not behind him and Shargar had he any soul for such things doubtless but how could he be other than lives behind Robert for the latter had ancestors that is he came of people with a mental and spiritual history while the former had been born the birth of an animal of a noble sire whose family had for generations filled the earth with fire fame and slaughter and licentiousness and of a wandering outcast mother who blindly loved the fields and woods but retained her affection for her offspring scarcely beyond the period while she suckled them the love of freedom and of wild animals that she had given him however was far more precious than any share his male ancestor had born in his mental constitution after his fashion he as well as Robert enjoyed the sun and the wind and the water and the sky but he had sympathies with the salmon and the rocks and the wild rabbits even stronger than those of Robert and Chapter 18 Book 1 Chapter 19 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald this Libravox recording is in the public domain Robert Falconer by George McDonald Chapter 19 Robert steals his own the period of the Hearst play that is of the harvest holiday time drew near and over the north of Scotland thousands of half grown hearts were beating with glad anticipation of the usual devices of boys to cheat themselves into the half belief of expediting a blessed approach by marking its rate Robert knew nothing even the notching of sticks was unknown at Rothedon but he had a mode notwithstanding although indifferent to the games of his school fellows there was one amusement a solitary one nearly and therein not so good as most amusements into which he entered with the whole energy of his nature it was kite flying the moment that the Hearst play approached near enough to strike its image through the eyes of his mind Robert proceeded to make his kite or dragon as he called it of how many pleasures does pocket money deprive the unfortunate possessor what is the going into a shop and buying what you want compared with the gentle delight of hours and days filled with gaining effort after the attainment of your end never boy that bought his kite even if the adornment thereafter lay in his own hands and the pictures were gorgeous with color and gilding could have half the commitment of Robert from the moment he went to the coopers to ask for an old gird or hoop to the moment when he said no chargar and the kite rose slowly from the depth of the aerial flood the hoop was carefully examined the best portion cut away from it that paired to a light strength its ends confined to the proper curve by strength and then away went Robert to the right shop and his strength and thickness was readily granted to his request free as the daisies of the field oh those horrid town conditions where nothing is given for the asking but all sold for money in Robert's kite the only thing that cost money was the string to fly it with and that the grandmother willingly provided for not even her ingenuity could discover any evil direct or implicated in kite flying indeed I believe the old lady felt not a little sympathy with the exultation of the boy when he saw his kite far aloft diminished to a speck in the vast blue sympathy it may be rooted in the religious aspirations which she did so much at once to rouse and to suppress in the bosom of her grandchild but I have not yet reached the kite flying for I have said nothing of the kite's tail for the sake of which principally I began to describe the process of its growth as soon as the body of the dragon was completed Robert attached to its spine the string which was to take the place of its coddle elongation and at a proper distance from the body joined to the string the first of the cross pieces of folded paper which in this animal represent the continued vertebral processes every morning the moment he issued from his chamber he proceeded to the garret where the monster lay to add yet another joint to his tail until at length the day should arrive when the lessons over for a blessed eternity of five or six weeks he would tip the hole with a piece of wood to which grass quantum soft might be added from the happy fields upon this occasion the dragon was a monster one with a little help from Shargar he had laid a skeleton of a six foot specimen and it carried the body to a satisfactory completion the tail was still growing having as yet only sixteen joints when Mr. Lammy called with an invitation for the boys to spend their holidays with him it was fortunate for Robert that he was in the room when Mr. Lammy presented his petition otherwise he would never have heard of it till the day of departure arrived and would thus have lost all the delights of anticipation in frantic effort to control his ecstasy he sped to the garret and with trembling hands tied the second joint of the day to the tail of the dragon the first time he had ever broken the law of its accretion once broken that law was henceforth an object of scorn and the tail grew with frightful rapidity it was indeed a great dragon and none of the paltry fields about rothadin should be honored with its first flight but from body fall should the majestic child of earth ascend into the regions of upper air my reader may here be tempted to remind me that Robert had been only too glad to return to rothadin from his former visit but I must in my turn remind him that the circumstances were changed in the first place the fiddle was substituted for granny and in the second the dragon for the school the making of this dragon was a happy thing for Shargar and a yet happier thing for Robert in that it introduced again for a time some community of interest between them Shargar was happier than he had been for many a day because Robert used him and Robert was yet happier than Shargar in that his conscience which had reproached him for his neglect of him was now silent but not even his dragon had turned aside his attention from his violin and many were the consultations between the boys as to how best she might be transported to body fall where endless opportunities of holding communion with her would not be wanting the difficulty was only how to get her clear of rothadin the play commenced on a Saturday but not tilled the Monday where they set at liberty wherely the hours of mental labor and bodily torpedoity which the scots called the Sabbath passed away and at length the millennial morning dawned Robert and Shargar were up before the sun but strenuous were the efforts they made to suppress all indications lest granny fearing the immoral influence of gladness should give orders to delay their departure for an awfully indefinite period which might be an hour a day or even a week horrible conception their behavior was so decorous that not even a hinted threat escaped the lips of Mrs. Falconer they set out three hours before noon carrying the great kite and Robert's school bag of green buys full of sundries a cart from body fall was to fetch their luggage later in the day as soon as they were clear of the houses Shargar laid down behind a dike with the kite and Robert set off at full speed for double sanny shop making a half circuit of the town to avoid the chance of being seen by granny or Betty having given due warning before he found the brown paper parcel ready for him and carried it off in fearful triumph he joined Shargar in safety and they set out on their journey as rich and happy a pair of tramps as ever tramped having six weeks of their own in their pockets to spend and not spare a hearty welcome awaited them and they were soon reveling in the glories of the place the first installment of which was in the shape of curds and cream with oat cake and butter as much as they liked after this they would even to it like French falconers with their kite for the wind had been blowing bravely all the morning having business to do with the harvest the season of stubble not yet arrived they were limited to the pasture edge and moorland which however large as their kite was were spacious enough slowly the great headed creature arose from the hands of Shargar and ascended about twenty feet when as if seized with the sudden fit of wrath or fierce indignation it turned right round and dashed itself with headlong fury to the earth as if sooner then submit to such influences a moment longer it would beat out its brains at once it has not half tail enough cried Robert it's queer at things will not go on up on holding them down put a good hand full of clover Shargar she's had her fall and knew she'll go on up alright she's none the worse of it upon the next attempt the kite rose triumphantly but just as it reached the length of the string it shot into a faster current of air and Robert found himself first dragged along in spite of his efforts and then lifted from his feet after carrying him a few yards the dragon broke its string dropped him in a ditch and drifting away went fluttering and waggling downwards in the distance luck was she gone Shargar cried Robert from the ditch experience coming to his aid Shargar took landmarks of the direction in which it went and air long they found it with its tail entangled in the top most branches of a hawthorn tree and its head beating the ground at its foot it was at once agreed that they would not fly it again till they got some stronger string having heard the adventure Mr. Lambie produced a shilling from the pocket of his corduroy and gave it to Robert to spend upon the needful string he resolved to go to the town the next morning and make a grand purchase of the same during the afternoon he roamed about the farm with his hands in his pockets revolving if not many memories yet many questions while Shargar followed like a pup at the heels of Miss Lambie to whom during his former visit he had become greatly attached in the evening resolved to make a confidant of Mr. Lambie and indeed to cast himself upon the kindness of the household generally Robert went up to his room to release a brown paper what was his dismay to find not his bonnie laddie but her poor cousin the shoemaker's old wife it was too bad double sanny indeed he first stared then went into a rage and then came out of it to go into a resolution he replaced the unwelcome fiddle in the parcel and came downstairs gloomy and still wrathful but silent the evening passed over and the inhabitants of the farm house went early to bed Robert tossed about fuming on his he had not undressed about eleven o'clock after all had been still for more than an hour he took his shoes in one hand and the brown parcel in the other and descending the stairs like a thief undid the quiet wooden bar that secured the door and let himself out all his darkness for the moon was not yet up and he felt a strange sensation of ghostliness himself awake and out of doors when he ought to be asleep and unconscious in bed he had never been out so late before and felt as if walking in the region of the dead existing when and where he had no business to exist for it was the time nature kept for her own quiet and having once put her children to bed hidden them away with the world wiped out of them and closed them in her ebony box as George Herbert says he had been in her hours of undress and meditation intruded upon by a venturesome schoolboy yet she let him pass he put on his shoes and hurried to the road he heard a horse stamp in the stable and saw a cat dart across the corn yard as he went through these were all the signs of life about the place it was a cloudy night and still nothing was to be heard but his own footsteps the cattle in the fields were all asleep the march and spruce trees on the top of the hill by the foot of which his road wound was still as clouds he could just see the sky through their stems it was washed with the faintest of light for the moon far below was yet climbing towards the horizon a star too sparkled where the clouds broke but so little light was there that until he had passed the moorland on the hill he could not get the horror of moss holes and deep springs covered with treacherous green out of his head but he never thought of turning when the fears of the way it length fell back and allowed his own thoughts to rise the sense of a presence or of something that might grow to a presence was the first to awaken him the stillness seemed to be thinking all around his head but the way grew so dark where it lay through a corner of the pinewood that he had to feel the edge of the road with his foot to make sure that he was keeping upon it and the sense of silence vanished then he passed a farm and the motions of horses came through the dark and a doubtful crow from a young inexperienced cock who did not yet know the moon from the sun then a sleepy low in his ears startled him and made him quick in his pace involuntarily by the time he reached the rothadin all the lights were out and this was just what he wanted the economy of double sannies abode the outer door was always left on the latch at night because several families lived in the house the shoemaker's workshop opened from the passage close to the outer door therefore its door was locked but the key hung out a nail just inside the shoemaker's bedroom all this Robert knew arrived at the house he lifted the latch closed the door behind him took off his shoes once more like a housebreaker as indeed he was a more righteous one and felt his way to and up the stair to the bedroom there was a sound of snoring within the door was a little ajar he reached the key and descended his heart beating more and more wildly as he approached the realization of his hopes gently as he could he turned it in the lock in a moment more he had his hands on the spot where the shoemaker always laid his violin but his heart sank within him there was no violin there a blank of dismay held him both motionless and thoughtless nor had he recovered his senses before he heard footsteps which he well knew approaching in the street he slunk it once into a corner now Schender entered feeling his way carefully and muttering at his wife he was tipsy most likely but that had never yet interfered with the safety of his fiddle Robert heard its faint echo as he laid it gently down he was tipsy to lock the door behind him leaving Robert incarcerated amongst the old boots and leather and rosin for one moment only did the boys heart fail him the next he was in action for a happy thought had already struck him hastily that he might forestall sleep in the brain of the shoemaker he undid his parcel and after carefully enveloping his own violin in the paper took the old wife of the shoemaker and proceeded to perform upon her a trick every moment his master had taught him in which, not without some feeling of irreverence, he had occasionally practiced upon his own bonny laddie the shoemaker's room was overhead its thin floor of planks was the ceiling of the workshop Eridubelsani was well laid by the side of his sleeping wife he heard a frightful sound from below as though someone tearing his beloved violin to pieces no sound of rending coffin planks or rising dead would have been so horrible in the years of the shoemaker he sprang from his bed with a haste that shook the crazy tenement to its foundation the moment Robert heard that he put the violin in its place and took his station by the door check the shoemaker came tumbling down the stare and rushed at the door but found that he had to go back for the key when, with uncertain hand he had opened at length he went straight to the nest of his treasure and Robert, slipping out noiselessly was in the next street before Dubelsani having found the fiddle uninjured and not discovering the substitution had finished concluding that the whiskey in his imagination had played him a very discourteous trick between them and retired once more to bed and not till Robert had cut his foot badly with a piece of glass that he discovered that he had left his shoes behind him he tied it up with his handkerchief and limped home the three miles too happy to think of consequences before he had gone far the moon floated up on the horizon large and shaped like the broad side of a barrel she stared at him in amazement to see him out at such a time of the night but he grasped his violin and went on he had no fear now even when he passed again over the desolate moss although he saw the stagnant pools glimmering about him in the moonlight and ever after this he had a fancy for roaming at night he reached home in safety found the door as he had left it and ascended to his bed triumphant in his fiddle in the morning bloody prints were discovered on the stair and traced to the door of his room Miss Lamy entered in some alarm and found him fast asleep on his bed still dressed with the brown paper parcel in his arms and one of his feet evidently enough the source of the frightful stain she was too kind to wake him and inquiry was postponed till they met at breakfast to which he descended barefooted saved for a handkerchief on the injured foot Robert, my lad, said Mr. Lamy kindly who came ye by that bloody foot Robert began the story and guided by a few questions from his host at length told the tale of the violin from beginning to end omitting only his adventure in the factory Many a guffois from Mr. Lamy greeted its progress and Miss Lamy laughed till the tears rolled unheeded down her cheeks especially when Chargar emboldened by the admiration Robert had awakened imparted his private share in the comedy namely the entombment of Boston in a fifth fold state for the Lamy's were none of the unco good to be sensorious upon such exploits The whole business advanced the boys in favor at body fall and the entreaties of Robert that nothing should reach his grandmother's ears were entirely unnecessary After breakfast Miss Lamy dressed the wounded foot but what was to be done for shoes for Robert's Sunday pair had been left at home Under ordinary circumstances it would have been no great hardship to him to go barefoot for the rest of the autumn but the cut was rather a serious one so his feet were cased in a pair of Mr. Lamy's Sunday boots which from their size made it so difficult for him to get along that he did not go far from the doors but reveled in the company of his violin in the cornyard amongst last year's ricks in the barn and in the hayloft playing all the tunes he knew and trying over one or two more from a very dirty old book of scotch heirs which his teacher had lent him In the evening as they sat together after supper Mr. Lamy said Will Robert who is the fiddle Fine I thank you sir let's hear what you can do with it Robert fetched the instrument and complied let's know that ill remarked the farmer but ah man you should have heard your grandfather handle the bow that was something to hear once in a body's life you would have just thought the strings had been drawn from his own inside he kent them so wail and handled them so fine he just felt them like with his fingers through the bow and the horse hair and all and all the time he was drawing the sound like the soul from them and they just did all anything that he liked it ah to hear him play the floors of the forest would have guard ye great could my father play asked Robert ah well enough for him he could do anything he liked it to try better nor midland I never saw such a man he played upon the bagpipes and the flute and the bugle and I cannot what all but all together they came now within sight of his father upon the old fiddle let's have a look at her he took the instrument in his hands reverently turned it over and over and said aye aye it's the same old mole and I want a ground bonnie meal that smart creature knew it'll be worth a hundred pounds I want he added as he restored it carefully into Robert's hands to whom it was honey and spice to hear his bonnie lady paid her due honors can you play the floors of the forest new he added yet again aye can I answered Robert with some pride and laid the bow on the violin and played the air through without blundering a single note wheel that's very wheel said Mr. Lambie but it's name more like as your grandfather played it then given their word sawers added one edilka lug of the bow with the fiddle between them in a saw pit Robert's heart sank within him but Mr. Lambie went on to hear the bow cooing and wailing and great to know the strings would have just guard you see the lands of broad Scotland with all the lassies greeting for the lads that lay upon red flood and side lassies to cut and lassies to gather and lassies to bind and lassies to stook and lassies to lead and knew a lad among them all it's just a morning of women doing men's work as well as their own for the men that should have been there to do it and I was warranted no word to the exceptional overall lad that did not go on with the rest Robert had not hitherto understood it this wail of a pastoral and plowing people over those who had left their side to return no more from the field of battle Mr. Lambie's description of his grandfather's rendering laid hold of his heart I would rather be groten for nor kissed he said simply hold you to that my lad returned Mr. Lambie let the lassies greet for you given they like but hold oat or from the kissen I would not mail with it oat father did not put such nonsense in the Baron's head said Miss Lambie nonsense Aggie asked her father slyly but I do it he added he'll never played the floors of the forest as it should be played till he's had a taste of the kissen lass well it's a queer instructor of yoth at says and on says in the same breath never mind I have not contradicted myself yet for I have said nothing but Robert my man you mount pit more soul into fiddling you cannot play the fiddle till you can guard great it's uncle ready to that of its own self and it's my opinion that there's no another instrument but the fiddle fit to play the floors of the forest upon for that very reason in all his majesty's dominions my father played the fiddle but no like your grandfather Robert was silent he spent the whole of the next morning in reiterated attempts to alter his style of playing the air in question but in vain as far at least as any satisfaction to himself was the result he laid the instrument down in despair and sat for an hour to consulate upon the bedside his visit had not as yet been at all so fertile and pleasure as he had anticipated he could not fly as kite he could not walk he had lost his shoes Mr. Lamy had not approved his plane and although he had his will of the fiddle he could not get his will out of it he could never play so as to please miss St. John nothing but mainly pride kept him from crying he was sorely disappointed and dissatisfied and the world might be dreary even at body fall few men can wait upon the bright day in the midst of the dull one nor can many men even wait for it End Chapter 19 Book 1 Chapter 20 of Robert Falconer by George Macdonald this Libra Vox recording is in the public domain Robert Falconer by George Macdonald Chapter 20 Jesse Houston the wound on Robert's foot festered and had not yet healed when the sickle was first put to the barley without however to the reapers for he could not bear to be left alone with his violin so dreadfully oppressive was the knowledge that he could not use it after its nature he began to think whether his incapacity was not a judgment upon him for taking it away from the shoemaker who could do so much more with it and to whom consequently it was so much more valuable the pain in his foot likewise had been very depressing and but for the kindness of his friends he would have been all together a weary white forlorn Shargar was happier than ever he had been in his life his white face hung on Miss Lamie's looks and haunted her steps from storeroom to milkhouse and from milkhouse to chessel surmounted by the glory of his red hair which a farm servant declared he had once mistaken for a wind bush on fire this day she had gone to the field to see the first handful of barley cut who was there of course it was a glorious day of blue and gold with just wind enough to set the barley heads a-talkin' but whether from the heat of the sun or the pain of his foot operating on the general discouragement under which he labored Robert turned faint all at once and dragged himself away to a cottage on the edge of the field it was the dwelling of a cotter whose family had been settled upon the form of body-fold from time immemorial they were indeed like other cotters a kind of feudal dependence occupying an acre or two of the land in return for which they performed certain stipulated labor called cotter work the greater part of the family was employed in the work of the farm at the regular wages alas for Scotland that such families are now to seek would that the parliaments of our country held such a proportion of noble-minded men as was once to be found in the clay huts on a hillside or grouped about a central farm huts whose wretched look would move the pity of Miniaman as inferior to their occupants as a King Charles's lapdog is to a shepherd's collie the utensils of their life were mean enough the life itself was often elixir vitae a true family life looking up to the high divine life but well for the world that such life has been scattered over it east and west the seed of fresh growth in new lands out of offense to the individual God brings good to the whole for he pets no nation but trains it for the perfect globular life of all nations of his world of his universe as he makes families mingle to redeem each from its family selfishness so will he make nations mingle and love and correct and reform develop each other till the planet world shall go singing through space one harmony to the God of the whole earth the excellence must vanish from one portion that it may be diffused through the whole the seed ripens on one favored mound and is scattered over the plane we console ourselves with the higher thought that if Scotland is worse the world is better yea even they by whom the offense came and who have first to reap the woe of that offense because they did the will of God to satisfy their own avarice and laying land to land and house to house shall not reap their punishment in having their own will and standing there for alone in the earth when the good of their evil deeds returns upon it but the tears of men that ascend to heaven in the heat of their burning dwellings shall descend in the dew of blessing even on the hearts of them that kindled the fire something too much of this Robert lifted the latch and walked into the cottage it was not quite so strange to him as it would be to most of my readers still he had not been in such a place before a girl who was stooping by the small peat fire on the earth looked up and seen that he was lame came across the heights and hollows of the clay floor to meet him Robert spoke so faintly that she could not hear what's your well he asked then changing her tone heck you no wheel she said but come into the fire take hold of me and come your ways but she was a pretty indeed graceful girl of about 18 with elasticity rather than undulation of movement which distinguishes the peasant from the city girl she led him to the ear of the chimney carefully leveled a wooden chair to the inequalities of the floor sit idun will I fess a drappy of milk give me a drink of water giving you please said Robert she brought it he drank and felt better a baby woke in a cradle on the other side of the fire and began to cry the girl went and took him up and then Robert saw what she was like light brown hair clustered about a delicately colored face and hazel eyes later in the harvest her cheeks would be ruddy now they were peach colored a white neck rose above a pink print jacket called a wrapper and the rest of her visible dress was a blue petticoat she ended in pretty brown bare feet Robert liked her and began to talk if his imagination had not been already filled he would have fallen in love with her I dare say at once for except Miss St. John he had never seen anything he thought so beautiful the baby cried now and then what else the bear knee he asked ow it's just cut in its teeth giving it great smuck all I'm out just take it to my mother she'll soon quiet it are you holding better potai I'm a right to know is your mother Sharon nah she's gathering the Sharon's some sore work for her you now I should have been Sharon but my mother would faint have a day of the harvest she thought it would do her good but I was warned a day of it will satisfy her and I was be added in the morning she's been on Kaelan all the summer and so has the bear knee he might have had a sore time of it then I some but I got some sleep I just took the string onto the bed with me and when the bear knee great I woke it and rock it till it fall asleep again well as nothing would do but take him till his mommy all the time she was hushing and finally in the child who went on fretting would not actually crying is he your brother then asked Robert I what other amount take him I see but you can sit here as long as you like and giving you gone before I come back just turn the key in the door to let anybody know that there's nobody in the house Robert thanked her and remained in the shadow by the chimney which was formed two smoke brown planks fastened up the wall one on each side of an inverted wooden funnel above to conduct the smoke through the roof he sat for some time gloomily gazing at a spot of sunlight which burned on the brown clay floor all was still as death and he felt the white washed walls even more desolate than if they had been smoke begrind looking about him he found over his head something which he did not understand it was as big as the stump of a great tree apparently it belonged to the structure of the cottage but he could not in the imperfect light and the dazzling of the sun spot at which he had been staring make out what it was or how it came to be up there unsupported as far as he could see he rose to examine it lifted a bit of tarpuline which hung before it and found a rickety box suspended by a rope from a great nail on the wall it had two shelves in it full of books now although there were more books in Mr. Lammy's house than in his grandmothers the only one he had found that in the least enticed him to read was a translation of George Buchanan's history of Scotland this he had begun to read faithfully believing every word of it but had it last broken down at the 50th king or so imagine then the moon that arose on the boy when having pulled a ragged and thumb-worn book from among those of James Houston the Cotter he for the first time found himself in the midst of the Arabian knights a shrink from all attempt to set forth in words the rainbow color delight that coruscated in his brain when Jesse Houston returned she found him seated where she had left him so buried in his volume that he did not lift his head when she entered have gotten a book she said I have I answered Robert decisively it's a fine book that did you ever see it before never there's three volumes of it a boot here and there said Jesse and with the child on one arm she proceeded with the other hand to search for them on the top of the wall where the rafters rest there she found two or three books which after finding them she placed on the dresser beside Robert there's none of them there she said but maybe you would like to look at that ons Robert thanked her but was too busy to feel the least curiosity about any book in the world but the one he was reading he read on heart and soul and mind absorbed in the marvels of the eastern scald the stories told in the streets of Cairo amidst gorgeous costumes and camels and white veiled women vibrating in the heart of a scotch boy in the darkest corner of a mud cottage at the foot of a hill of cold loving pines with the barefoot girl and a baby for his companion but the pleasure he had been having was of a sort rather to expedite than to delay the subjective arrival of dinner time there was however happily no occasion to go home in order to appease his hunger he had but to join the men and women in the barley field there was sure to be enough for Miss Lambie to set the head of the commissariat when he had had as much milk porridge as he could eat and a good slice of cheese with the wooden bowl of ale all of which he consumed as if the good of them lay in the haste of their appropriation he hurried back to the cottage and sat there reading the arabian knights till the sun went down in the orange hued west and the glomen came and withered the reapers John and El spet hueson and their son George to their supper and early bed John was a cheerful rough Roman nose black eyed man who took snuff largely and was not careful to remove the traces of the habit he had a loud voice and an original way of regarding things which with his vivacity made every remark sound like the proclamation of a discovery are you there Robert said he is he entered Robert Rose absorbed and silent he's been here all day reading like a college dinner said Jesse what are you reading say diligent man asked John the book of stories here answered Robert carelessly shy of being supposed so much engrossed with them as he really was I should never expect much of a young poet who was not rather ashamed of the distinction which yet he chiefly coveted there is a modesty in all young delight it is wild and shy and would hide itself like a boys or maidens first love on the gaze of the people something like this was Robert's feeling over the Arabian nights I said John taken snuff from a small bone spoon it's a grand book that but my son Charlie him it's dead and gone home would have tell it it was idle time reading that was such a book as that either lying at your elbow pointed to one of the books Jesse had taken and laid down beside him on the floor dresser Robert took up the volume and opened it there was no title page the tempest he said what is it poetry I is it it's Shakespeare I have heard of him said Robert what was he a player kind of a chill with an uncle sight of brains answered John you could not have had muckled time to go on and so on and about the country like most of the cattle given he wrote all that I'm thinking or did he buy away in England mostly about London I'm thinking there's the place for a by ordinary folk they tell me who long is it since he died I did not can a hundred year twa as warrant it's a long time but I'm thinking folk then was just something like what they are new but I can little about him for the prince some smart and I'm some ill for losing my characters and so I do not win that far been with him Jordy there I'll tell you more about him but George Houston had not much to communicate for he had but lately landed in Shakespeare's country and had got but a little way inland yet nor did Robert much care for his head was full of the Arabian Knights this however was his first introduction to Shakespeare finding himself much at home he stopped yet a while shared in the supper and resumed his seat in the corner when the book was brought out for worship the iron lamp with its wick of rush pith which hung against the side of the chimney was lighted and John sat down to read but as his eyes and the print too had grown a little dim with years the lamp was not enough and he asked for a fur candle the dog from the peat bog was handed to him he lighted it at the lamp and held it in his hand over the page its clear resinous flame enabled him to read a short psalm then they sang a most well full tune and John prayed if I were to give the prayer as he uttered it I might make my reader laugh therefore I abstain assuring him only that although full of long words amongst the rest aspiration and ravishment the prayer of the cheerful loving cotter contained evidence of a degree of religious development rare I doubt among bishops when Robert left the cottage he found the sky partly clouded in the air cold the nearest way home was across the barley stubble of the day's reaping which lay under a little hill covered with various species of the pine his own soul after the restful day he had spent and under the reaction from the new excitement of the stories he had been reading was like a quiet moonless night the thought of his mother came back upon him and her written words oh lord my heart is very sore and the thought of his father followed that and he limped slowly home laden with mournfulness as he reached the middle of the field the wind was suddenly there with the low soft from out of the northwest the heads of barley and the sheaves leaned away with the soft rustling from before it and Robert felt for the first time the sadness filled then the wind swept away to the pine covered hill and raised a rushing and a wailing amongst its thin clad branches and to the air of Robert the trees were singing over again in their night solitudes the air sung by the cotter's family when he looked to the northwest once the wind came he saw nothing but a pale cleft in the sky the meaning the music of the night awoke in his soul he forgot his lame foot and the weight of his boots ran home and up the stair to his own room seized his violin with eager haste nor laid it down again till he could draw from it at will a sound like the moaning of the wind over the stubble field then he knew that he could play the flowers of the forest the wind that shakes the barley cannot have been named from the barley after it was cut but while it stood in the field the flowers of the forest was of the gathered harvest the air once over in the dark and then carried his violin down to the room where Mr. and Miss Lambie sat I think I can play it new Mr. Lambie he said abruptly play what Callent asked his host the flowers of the forest play away then and Robert played not so well as he had hoped I dare say it was a humble enough performance but he gave something at least an expression Mr. Lambie desired for the moment the tune was over he exclaimed wheel done Robert man you'll be a fiddler some day yet and Robert was well satisfied with the praise I wish your mother had been alive the farmer went on she would have been real prude to hear you play like that as she like it the fiddle wheel and she could play Bonnie upon the piano herself it was something to hear the 12 of them playing together him on the fiddle that very fiddle of his father's at you have in your hand and her on the piano but she was a Bonnie woman as ever I saw and that quiet it's my belief she never thought about her own biote from weeks end to weeks end and that's no saying little is it Aggie I never pretended only right to think about such return that's right last odd your eye in the right though I say it at Sudna Mr. Lambie must indeed have been good natured to answer only with a genuine laugh Shargar looked explosive with anger but Robert would feign hear more of his mother what was my mother like Mr. Lambie he asked if my man you should have seen her upon a Bonnie Bay mare that your father faced she sat as straight as a rash with just a hint in the head of her like the head of a home of wild oats my father was not that ill till her then suggested Robert however Dard say such a thing returned Mr. Lambie but in a tone so far from satisfactory to Robert that he inquired no more in that direction I need hardly say that from that night Robert was more than ever diligent with his violin and Chapter 20 Book 1 Chapter 21 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald this Libravox recording is in the public domain Robert Falconer by George McDonald Chapter 21 The Dragon next day his foot was so much better that he sent Shargar to Rotheden to buy a string taking with him Robert's school bag in which to carry off his Sunday shoes for as to those left at dooblesanies they judged it unsafe to go in quest of them the shoemaker could hardly be in a humor fit to be intruded upon having procured the string Shargar went to Mrs. Falconer's anxious not to encounter her but if possible to bug the boots quietly he opened the door peeped in and seen no one away towards the kitchen he was arrested however as he crossed the passage by the voice of Mrs. Falconer calling what's that there she was at the parlor door it paralyzed him his first impulse was to make a rush and escape but the boots he could not go without at least an attempt upon them so he turned and faced her with inward trembling what's that repeated the old lady regarding him fixedly what do you want you came not to see me I'm thinking what have you in that bag I came to buy twine for the dragon answered Shargar he had twine enough of four it broke it was not strong enough or got you the sciller to buy more let's see it Shargar took the string from the bag sit a sight of twine what paid you for it a shillen or got you the shillen Mr. Lambie gave it to Robert I will not have you take sciller from nobody it's ill manners ha said the old lady putting her hand in her pocket and taking out a shilling ha she said give Mr. Lambie back his shilling and tell him I would not have you learn such ill customs as take silver it's enough to go on exacting three quarters as you do on begot for sciller are they all wheel I brahly answered Shargar put the shilling in his pocket in another moment Shargar had without a word of adieu embezzled his shoes and escaped from the house without seeing Betty he went straight to the shop he had just left and bought another shillings worth of string when he got home he concealed nothing from Robert whom he found seated in the barn with his fiddle waiting his return Robert started to his feet he could appropriate his grandfather's violin to which possibly he might have shown as good a right as his grandmother certainly his grandfather would have accorded him but her money was sacred Shargar he bratch he cried fest that shillen here directly take the twine with you and guard them give you back the shillen they would not break the bargain cried Shargar beginning almost to whimper for a savory smell of dinner was coming across the yard tell them it's stone sciller and they'll be in hot water but it given they did not give it back I won't have my dinner first remonstrated Shargar but the spirit of his grandmother was strong in Robert and in a matter of rectitude there must be no temporizing as well as the old lady herself they'll a bite or a sup's gone or your throttle till I see that shillen there was no help for it six hungry miles must be trudged by Shargar or he got a morsel to eat two hours and a half past before he reappeared but he brought the shillen as to how he recovered it Robert questioned him in vain Shargar in his turn was obstinate she's a some unmanageable wife that granny of yours said Mr. Lambie when Robert returned the shillen with Mrs. Falconer's message but I reckon I'm out put it in my pooch for she will have her own gate and I did not want to strive with her but given any of you be in want of shillen want any day lads as long as I'm a boon in the yard this one will be grown twa or maybe more given that time so saying the farmer put the shillen into his pocket and buttoned it up the dragon flew splendidly now and its strength was mighty it was Robert's custom to drive a stake into the ground slanting against the wind and thereby tether the animal as if it were up there grazing in its own natural region then he would lie down by the stake and read the Arabian knights every now and then casting a glance upward at the creature alone in the waste air yet all in his power by the string at his side somehow the high flown dragon was a bond between him and the blue he seemed near to the sky while it flew or at least the heaven seemed less far away and inaccessible while he lay there gazing all at once he would find that his soul was up with the dragon feeling as it felt tossing about with it in the torrents of the air out of his eyes it would go traverse the dim space and sport with the wind blown monster sometimes to aid his aspiration he would take a bit of paper make a hole in it pass the end of the string through the hole and send the messenger scutting along the line of thwart the depth of the wind if it stuck by the way he would get a telescope of Mr. Lamese and therewith watch it struggle till it broke loose then follow it up to the kite away with each successive paper his imagination would fly and a sense of air and height and freedom settled from his play into his very soul a germ to sprout hereafter and enrich the forms of his aspirations and all his after memories of kite flying were mangled with pictures of eastern magnificence far from the airy height of the dragon his eyes always came down upon the enchanted pages of John Huston's book sometimes again he would throw down his book and sitting up back against the stake lift his bonny lady from his side and play as he had never played in Rothedon playing to the dragon aloft to keep him strong in his soaring and fierce in his battling with the winds of heaven then he fancied that the monster swooped and swept in arcs and swayed curving to and fro in rhythmic response to the music floating up through the wind what a full globated symbolism laid then around the heart of the boy in his book his violin his kite and chapter 21 book 1 chapter 22 of Robert Falconer by George McDonald this Libra Vox recording is in the public domain Robert Falconer by George McDonald chapter 22 Dr. Anderson one afternoon as they were sitting on a tree a footstep in the garden approached the house and then a figure passed the window Mr. Lamey started to his feet bless my soul Aggie that's Anderson he cried and hurried to the door his daughter followed the boys kept their seats a loud and hearty salutation reached their ears but the voice of the farmer was all they heard presently he returned bringing with him the tallest and slenderest was considerably over six feet with a small head and delicate if not fine features a gentle look in his blue eyes and a slow clear voice which sounded as if it were thinking about every word it uttered the hot son of India seemed to have burned out everything self-assertive leaving him quietly and rather sadly contemplative come in come in repeated Mr. Lamey overflowing with glad welcome what'll you have that's a friend of your own he continued pointing to Robert and a fine lad then lowering his voice he added a son of poor Andrews you can doctor the boys rose and Dr. Anderson stretching his long arms across the table shook hands kindly with Robert and Chargar then he sat down and began to help himself to the cakes okay at which Robert wondered seeing there was white bread on the table Miss Lamey presently came in with the teapot and some additional dainties and the boys took the opportunity of beginning at the beginning again Dr. Anderson remained for a few days at body fall sending Chargar to Rothedon for some necessaries from the boar's head where he had left his servant in luggage during this time Mr. Lamey was much occupied with his farm affairs anxious to get his harvest in as quickly possible because a change of weather was to be dreaded so the doctor was left a good deal to himself he was fond of wandering about but thoughtful as he was did not object to the companionship which Robert implicitly offered him before many hours were over the two were friends various things attracted Robert to the doctor first he was a relation of his own older than himself the first he had known except his father and Robert's heart was one of the most thoughtful second or perhaps I ought to have put this first he was the only gentleman except Eric Erickson whose acquaintance he had yet made third he was kind to him and gentle to him and above all respectful to him and to be respected was a new sensation to Robert altogether and lastly he could tell stories of elephants and tiger hunts and all the Arabian knights of India he did not volunteer much talk he soon found that he could draw him out but what attracted the man to the boy ah Robert said the doctor one day sadly it's a sort thing to come home after being 30 years away he looked up at the sky then all round at the hills the face of nature alone remained the same then his glance fell on Robert and he saw a pair of black eyes looking up at him brimful of tears and thus the man was drawn to the boy Robert worshiped Dr. Anderson as long as he remained their visitor kite and violin and all were forgotten and he followed him like a dog to have such a gentleman for a relation was grand indeed what could he do for him he ministered to him in all manner of trifles a little to the amusement of Dr. Anderson but more to his pleasure for he saw that the boy was both large hearted and lowly minded Dr. Anderson had learned to read character else he would never have been the honor to his profession that he was but all the time Robert could not get him to speak about his father he steadily avoided the subject when he went away the two boys walked with them to the boar's head caught a glimpse of his Hindu attendant much to their wonderment received from the doctor a sovereign apiece and a kind goodbye and returned to body felled Dr. Anderson remained a few days longer after Robert and among others visited Mrs. Falconer who was his first cousin what passed between them Robert never heard nor did his grandmother even allude to the visit he went by the male coach from Robert and whether he should ever see him again Robert did not know he flew his kite no more for a while but took himself to the work of the harvest field in which Robert went for a share but his violin was no longer neglected day after day passed in the delights of labor broken for Robert by the Arabian knights and the violin and for Shargar by attendance upon Mislami till the fields lay bare of their harvest and the night wind of autumn moaned everywhere over the vanished glory of the country and it was time to go back to school end chapter 22