s, he started back in dismay, for there stood
the beautiful lady.

Robert hesitated for a moment whether to fly or speak. He was a Lowland
country boy, and therefore rude of speech, but he was three parts a
Celt, and those who know the address of the Irish or of the Highlanders,
know how much that involves as to manners and bearing. He advanced the
next instant and spoke.

'I beg yer pardon, mem. I thoucht naebody wad see me. I haena dune nae
ill.'

'I had not the least suspicion of it, I assure you,' returned Miss St.
John. 'But, tell me, what makes you go through here always at the same
hour with the same parcel under your arm?'

'Ye winna tell naebody--will ye, mem, gin I tell you?'

Miss St. John, amused, and interested besides in the contrast between
the boy's oddly noble face and good bearing on the one hand, and on the
other the drawl of his bluntly articulated speech and the coarseness of
his tone, both seeming to her in the extreme of provincialism, promised;
and Robert, entranced by all the qualities of her voice and speech, and
nothing disenchanted by the nearer view of her lovely face, confided in
her at once.

'Ye see, mem,' he said, 'I cam' upo' my grandfather's fiddle. But my
grandmither thinks the fiddle's no gude. And sae she tuik and she hed
it. But I faun't it again. An' I daurna play i' the hoose, though my
grannie's i' the country, for Betty hearin' me and tellin' her. And sae
I gang to the auld fact'ry there. It belangs to my grannie, and sae does
the yaird (garden). An' this hoose and yaird was ance my father's, and
sae he had that door throu, they tell me. An' I thocht gin it suld be
open, it wad be a fine thing for me, to haud fowk ohn seen me. But it
was verra ill-bred to you, mem, I ken, to come throu your yaird ohn
speirt leave. I beg yer pardon, mem, an' I'll jist gang back, and roon'
by the ro'd. This is my fiddle I hae aneath my airm. We bude to pit back
the case o' 't whaur it was afore, i' my grannie's bed, to haud her ohn
kent 'at she had tint the grup o' 't.'

Certainly Miss St. John could not have understood the half of the words
Robert used, but she understood his story notwithstanding. Herself an
enthusiast in music, her sympathies were at once engaged for the awkward
boy who was thus trying to steal an entrance into the fairy halls
of sound. But she forbore any further allusion to the violin for the
present, and contented herself with assuring Robert that he was heartily
w