For six months, that passed as swiftly as six weeks of a certain existence, we went on together--I should have said--hand-in-hand, but that my Starwood's diffident melancholy and Iskar's travestied hauteur would have held me back, and I was ardent to impel myself forward. So, though at first I had to work almost to desperation in order to join the evening contrapuntal class, I soon left the other two behind, and Aronach taught me alone,--which was an advantage it would be impossible to overrate. Not that he ever commended,--it was not in him; he was too exigent, too stern; his powers never condescended; he was never known to qualify; he was never personally made acquaintance with. Something of the hermit blended mystically with his acumen, so that the primary advantage of our position was his supreme standard, insensibly our own also,--the secondary, our undisturbed seclusion. As I said, we walked the same distance day by day. Nothing is uniform to a soul really set on the idealities of art. Everything, though it changes not, suggests to the mind of the musician. Though not a full-grown mind, I had all joy in that unchanging route; for as the year grew and rounded, all, as it were, aspired without changing. Meditation mellowed every circumstance till it ripened to an unalterable charm. I always walked with Starwood, who still made me very anxious; suddenly and increasingly so pale and frail he became that I fully expected him to die that spring. Indeed, he hardly cleared it; and I should have mentioned my fears to Aronach but that he seemed fully aware of all I feared. But instead of getting rid of the weakling, as I dreaded he might choose to do, he physicked him and kept him in his bed-box twice or thrice a week, and taciturnly indulged him; giving him hot possets at night, and cooling drinks by day. The poor little fellow was very grateful, but still sad; and I was astonished that Aronach still expected him to practise, unless he was in bed, and to write, except his head ached. The indefinite disorder very seldom reached that climax though, and chiefly asserted itself in baby-yawns and occasional whimpers, constant weariness, and entire loss of appetite. I at length discovered his age, and Iskar's also. The latter had passed eleven, but was not so nearly twelve as I; the first was scarcely nine, and so small he might have been only six. It struck me he would not be much older, and I had learned to love him too well in his infantine and affecting weakness. I ventured, one day, to ask Aronach whether his father knew he was ill. I was answered,-- "He is not ill." "But, sir, he is low and weak!" "He will always be weak while thou art petting him. Who can take more care of him than I? His father?" "Oh, master! I know you are good; but what if he dies?" "His work will not have killed him, nor his weakness. If people are to die, they die; if they are to live, they live."