sted Robert; 'for it's a poem to me,
whatever it may be to you. An' hoo I ken 'at it's a poem is jist this:
it opens my een like music to something I never saw afore.'

'What is that?' asked Ericson, not sorry to be persuaded that there
might after all be some merit in the productions painfully despised of
himself.

'Jist this: it's only whan ye dinna want to fa' asleep 'at it luiks
fearsome to ye. An' maybe the fear o' death comes i' the same way: we're
feared at it 'cause we're no a'thegither ready for 't; but whan the
richt time comes, it'll be as nat'ral as fa'in' asleep whan we're
doonricht sleepy. Gin there be a God to ca' oor Father in heaven, I'm
no thinkin' that he wad to sae mony bonny tunes pit a scraich for the
hinder end. I'm thinkin', gin there be onything in 't ava--ye ken I'm no
sayin', for I dinna ken--we maun jist lippen till him to dee dacent an'
bonny, an' nae sic strange awfu' fash aboot it as some fowk wad mak a
religion o' expeckin'.'

Ericson looked at Robert with admiration mingled with something akin to
merriment.

'One would think it was your grandfather holding forth, Robert,' he
said. 'How came you to think of such things at your age?'

'I'm thinkin',' answered Robert, 'ye warna muckle aulder nor mysel' whan
ye took to sic things, Mr. Ericson. But, 'deed, maybe my luckie-daddie
(grandfather) pat them i' my heid, for I had a heap ado wi' his fiddle
for a while. She's deid noo.'

Not understanding him, Ericson began to question, and out came the story
of the violins. They talked on till the last of their coals was burnt
out, and then they went to bed.

Shargar had undertaken to rouse them early, that they might set out on
their long walk with a long day before them. But Robert was awake before
Shargar. The all but soulless light of the dreary season awoke him,
and he rose and looked out. Aurora, as aged now as her loved Tithonus,
peered, gray-haired and desolate, over the edge of the tossing sea, with
hardly enough of light in her dim eyes to show the broken crests of the
waves that rushed shorewards before the wind of her rising. Such an east
wind was the right breath to issue from such a pale mouth of hopeless
revelation as that which opened with dead lips across the troubled sea
on the far horizon. While he gazed, the east darkened; a cloud of hail
rushed against the window; and Robert retreated to his bed. But ere he
had fallen asleep, Ericson was beside him; and before he was dres