grass, and Miss St. John had no difficulty in finding his entrance to
the factory.

She felt a little eerie, as Robert would have called it, when she passed
into the waste silent place; for besides the wasteness and the silence,
motionless machines have a look of death about them, at least when they
bear such signs of disuse as those that filled these rooms. Hearing no
violin, she waited for a while in the ground-floor of the building; but
still hearing nothing, she ascended to the first floor. Here, likewise,
all was silence. She hesitated, but at length ventured up the next
stair, beginning, however, to feel a little troubled as well as eerie,
the silence was so obstinately persistent. Was it possible that there
was no violin in that brown paper? But that boy could not be a liar.
Passing shelves piled-up with stores of old thread, she still went on,
led by a curiosity stronger than her gathering fear. At last she came
to a little room, the door of which was open, and there she saw Robert
lying on the floor with his head in a pool of blood.

Now Mary St. John was both brave and kind; and, therefore, though not
insensible to the fact that she too must be in danger where violence had
been used to a boy, she set about assisting him at once. His face was
deathlike, but she did not think he was dead. She drew him out into the
passage, for the room was close, and did all she could to recover him;
but for some time he did not even breathe. At last his lips moved, and
he murmured,

'Sandy, Sandy, ye've broken my bonnie leddy.'

Then he opened his eyes, and seeing a face to dream about bending in
kind consternation over him, closed them again with a smile and a sigh,
as if to prolong his dream.

The blood now came fast into his forsaken cheeks, and began to flow
again from the wound in his head. The lady bound it up with her
handkerchief. After a little he rose, though with difficulty, and stared
wildly about him, saying, with imperfect articulation, 'Father! father!'
Then he looked at Miss St. John with a kind of dazed inquiry in his
eyes, tried several times to speak, and could not.

'Can you walk at all?' asked Miss St. John, supporting him, for she was
anxious to leave the place.

'Yes, mem, weel eneuch,' he answered.

'Come along, then. I will help you home.'

'Na, na,' he said, as if he had just recalled something. 'Dinna min' me.
Rin hame, mem, or he'll see ye!'

'Who will see me?'

Robert stared more wil