mood for Shargar's
company. It was a fine spring day, the woods were budding, and the
fragrance of the larches floated across his way. There was a lovely
sadness in the sky, and in the motions of the air, and in the scent of
the earth--as if they all knew that fine things were at hand which never
could be so beautiful as those that had gone away. And Robert wondered
how it was that everything should look so different. Even Bodyfauld
seemed to have lost its enchantment, though his friends were as kind as
ever. Mr. Lammie went into a rage at the story of the lost violin, and
Miss Lammie cried from sympathy with Robert's distress at the fate of
his bonny leddy. Then he came to the occasion of his visit, which was
to beg Mr. Lammie, when next he went to Aberdeen, to take the soutar's
fiddle, and get what he could for it, to help his widow.

'Poor Sanny!' said Robert, 'it never cam' intil 's heid to sell her, nae
mair nor gin she had been the auld wife 'at he ca'd her.'

Mr. Lammie undertook the commission; and the next time he saw Robert,
handed him ten pounds as the result of the negotiation. It was all
Robert could do, however, to get the poor woman to take the money. She
looked at it with repugnance, almost as if it had been the price of
blood. But Robert having succeeded in overcoming her scruples, she did
take it, and therewith provide a store of sweeties, and reels of cotton,
and tobacco, for sale in Sanny's workshop. She certainly did not make
money by her merchandise, for her anxiety to be honest rose to the
absurd; but she contrived to live without being reduced to prey upon her
own gingerbread and rock.

CHAPTER IV. THE ABERDEEN GARRET.

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 re-opening 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. Till 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