thousand other matters, Nature will
burst out laughing in the face of the would-be philosopher, and bringing
forward her town boy, will say, 'Look here!' For the town boys
are Nature's boys after all, at least so long as doctrines of
self-preservation and ambition have not turned them from children of
the kingdom into dirt-worms. But I must stop, for I am getting up to the
neck in a bog of discrimination. As if I did not know the nobility of
some townspeople, compared with the worldliness of some country folk. I
give it up. We are all good and all bad. God mend all. Nothing will do
for Jew or Gentile, Frenchman or Englishman, Negro or Circassian, town
boy or country boy, but the kingdom of heaven which is within him, and
must come thence to the outside of him.

To a boy like Robert the changes of every day, from country to town
with the gay morning, from town to country with the sober evening--for
country as Rothieden might be to Edinburgh, much more was Bodyfauld
country to Rothieden--were a source of boundless delight. Instead of
houses, he saw the horizon; instead of streets or walled gardens, he
roamed over fields bathed in sunlight and wind. Here it was good to
get up before the sun, for then he could see the sun get up. And of
all things those evening shadows lengthening out over the grassy
wildernesses--for fields of a very moderate size appeared such to
an imagination ever ready at the smallest hint to ascend its solemn
throne--were a deepening marvel. Town to country is what a ceiling is to
a caelum.

CHAPTER XVII. ADVENTURES.

Grannie'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 Bodyfauld lasted. If they had only been allowed
to sleep at Rothieden, what a universe of freedom would have been
theirs! As it was, he had but two hours to himself, pared at both ends,
in the middle of the day. Dooble Sanny might have given him a lesson
at that time, but he did not dare to carry his instrument through the
streets of Rothieden, for the proceeding 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 h