ack entrance less securely fastened, and with a
strange mingling of fear and curiosity had from time to time extended
his rambles over what seemed to him the huge desolation of the place.
Half of it was well built of stone and lime, but of the other half the
upper part was built of wood, which now showed signs of considerable
decay. One room opened into another through the length of the place,
revealing a vista of machines, standing with an air of the last folding
of the wings of silence over them, and the sense of a deeper and deeper
sinking into the soundless abyss. But their activity was not so far
vanished but that by degrees Robert came to fancy that he had some
time or other seen a woman seated at each of those silent powers, whose
single hand set the whole frame in motion, with its numberless spindles
and spools rapidly revolving--a vague mystery of endless threads in
orderly complication, out of which came some desired, to him unknown,
result, so that the whole place was full of a bewildering tumult of
work, every little reel contributing its share, as the water-drops
clashing together make the roar of a tempest. Now all was still as the
church on a week-day, still as the school on a Saturday afternoon. Nay,
the silence seemed to have settled down like the dust, and grown old and
thick, so dead and old that the ghost of the ancient noise had arisen to
haunt the place.

Thither would Robert carry his violin, and there would he woo her.

'I'm thinkin' I maun tak her wi' me the nicht, Sanders,' he said,
holding the fiddle lovingly to his bosom, after he had finished his next
lesson.

The shoemaker looked blank.

'Ye're no gaein' to desert me, are ye?'

'Na, weel I wat!' returned Robert. 'But I want to try her at hame. I
maun get used till her a bittie, ye ken, afore I can du onything wi'
her.'

'I wiss ye had na brought her here ava. What I am to du wantin' her!'

'What for dinna ye get yer ain back?'

'I haena the siller, man. And, forbye, I doobt I wadna be that sair
content wi' her noo gin I had her. I used to think her gran'. But I'm
clean oot o' conceit o' her. That bonnie leddy's ta'en 't clean oot o'
me.'

'But ye canna hae her aye, ye ken, Sanders. She's no mine. She's my
grannie's, ye ken.'

'What's the use o' her to her? She pits nae vailue upon her. Eh, man,
gin she wad gie her to me, I wad haud her i' the best o' shune a' the
lave o' her days.'

'That wadna be muckle, Sanders, for she has