r too. Your father is alive, I hope?'

Robert made no answer. Miss St. John turned.

The boy had a strange look, and seemed struggling with something in his
throat. She thought he was going to faint again, and hurried him into
the drawing-room. Her aunt had not yet left her room, and her uncle was
out.

'Sit down,' she said--so kindly--and Robert sat down on the edge of
a chair. Then she left the room, but presently returned with a little
brandy. 'There,' she said, offering the glass, 'that will do you good.'

'What is 't, mem?'

'Brandy. There's water in it, of course.'

'I daurna touch 't. Grannie cudna bide me to touch 't,'

So determined was he, that Miss St. John was forced to yield. Perhaps
she wondered that the boy who would deceive his grandmother about a
violin should be so immovable in regarding her pleasure in the matter of
a needful medicine. But in this fact I begin to see the very Falconer of
my manhood's worship.

'Eh, mem! gin ye wad play something upo' her,' he resumed, pointing
to the piano, which, although he had never seen one before, he at once
recognized, by some hidden mental operation, as the source of the sweet
sounds heard at the window, 'it wad du me mair guid than a haill bottle
o' brandy, or whusky either.'

'How do you know that?' asked Miss St. John, proceeding to sponge the
wound.

''Cause mony's the time I hae stud oot there i' the street, hearkenin'.
Dooble Sanny says 'at ye play jist as gin ye war my gran'father's fiddle
hersel', turned into the bonniest cratur ever God made.'

'How did you get such a terrible cut?'

She had removed the hair, and found that the injury was severe.

The boy was silent. She glanced round in his face. He was staring as if
he saw nothing, heard nothing. She would try again.

'Did you fall? Or how did you cut your head?'

'Yes, yes, mem, I fell,' he answered, hastily, with an air of relief,
and possibly with some tone of gratitude for the suggestion of a true
answer.

'What made you fall?'

Utter silence again. She felt a kind of turn--I do not know another word
to express what I mean: the boy must have fits, and either could not
tell, or was ashamed to tell, what had befallen him. Thereafter she
too was silent, and Robert thought she was offended. Possibly he felt a
change in the touch of her fingers.

'Mem, I wad like to tell ye,' he said, 'but I daurna.'

'Oh! never mind,' she returned kindly.

'Wad ye promise nae to tell naebody