bonny leddy creep into the pines on the hill, whose 'soft
and soul-like sounds' had taught him to play the Flowers of the Forest
on those strings which, like the nerves of an amputated limb, yet
thrilled through his being? Or might not some particle find its way by
winds and waters to sycamore forest of Italy, there creep up through the
channels of its life to some finely-rounded curve of noble tree, on
the side that ever looks sunwards, and be chosen once again by the
violin-hunter, to be wrought into a new and fame-gathering instrument?

Could it be that his bonny lady had learned her wondrous music in those
forests, from the shine of the sun, and the sighing of the winds through
the sycamores and pines? For Robert knew that the broad-leaved sycamore,
and the sharp, needle-leaved pine, had each its share in the violin.
Only as the wild innocence of human nature, uncorrupted by wrong,
untaught by suffering, is to that nature struggling out of darkness into
light, such and so different is the living wood, with its sweetest tones
of obedient impulse, answering only to the wind which bloweth where it
listeth, to that wood, chosen, separated, individualized, tortured into
strange, almost vital shape, after a law to us nearly unknown, strung
with strings from animal organizations, and put into the hands of man
to utter the feelings of a soul that has passed through a like history.
This Robert could not yet think, and had to grow able to think it by
being himself made an instrument of God's music.

What he could think was that the glorious mystery of his bonny leddy was
gone for ever--and alas! she had no soul. Here was an eternal sorrow.
He could never meet her again. His affections, which must live for
ever, were set upon that which had passed away. But the child that weeps
because his mutilated doll will not rise from the dead, shall yet find
relief from his sorrow, a true relief, both human and divine. He shall
know that that which in the doll made him love the doll, has not passed
away. And Robert must yet be comforted for the loss of his bonny leddy.
If she had had a soul, nothing but her own self could ever satisfy him.
As she had no soul, another body might take her place, nor occasion
reproach of inconstancy.

But, in the meantime, the shears of Fate having cut the string of the
sky-soaring kite of his imagination, had left him with the stick in his
hand. And thus the rest of that winter was dreary enough. The glo