nd, looked up at the moon, careless of her or
of aught else in heaven or on earth, and sunk into a reverie, in which
nothing was consciously present but a stream of fog-smoke that flowed
slowly, listlessly across the face of the moon, like the ghost of a
dead cataract. All at once a wailful sound arose in his head. He did not
think for some time whether it was born in his brain, or entered it from
without. At length he recognized the Flowers of the Forest, played as
only the soutar could play it. But alas! the cry responsive to his bow
came only from the auld wife--no more from the bonny leddy! Then he
remembered that there had been a humble wedding that morning on the
opposite side of the way; in the street department of the jollity
of which Shargar had taken a small share by firing a brass cannon,
subsequently confiscated by Mrs. Falconer. But this was a strange tune
to play at a wedding! The soutar half-way to his goal of drunkenness,
had begun to repent for the fiftieth time that year, had with his
repentance mingled the memory of the bonny leddy ruthlessly tortured
to death for his wrong, and had glided from a strathspey into that
sorrowful moaning. The lament interpreted itself to his disconsolate
pupil as he had never understood it before, not even in the
stubble-field; for it now spoke his own feelings of waste misery,
forsaken loneliness. Indeed Robert learned more of music in those few
minutes of the foggy winter night and open street, shut out of all
doors, with the tones of an ancient grief and lamentation floating
through the blotted moonlight over his ever-present sorrow, than he
could have learned from many lessons even of Miss St. John. He was cold
to the heart, yet went in a little comforted.

Things had gone ill with him. Outside of Paradise, deserted of his
angel, in the frost and the snow, the voice of the despised violin once
more the source of a sad comfort! But there is no better discipline
than an occasional descent from what we count well-being, to a former
despised or less happy condition. One of the results of this taste of
damnation in Robert was, that when he was in bed that night, his heart
began to turn gently towards his old master. How much did he not owe
him, after all! Had he not acted ill and ungratefully in deserting him?
His own vessel filled to the brim with grief, had he not let the waters
of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the soutar? The wail of
that violin echoed now