The enchantment of Bodyfauld soon wore off. The boys had no time to enter into the full enjoyment of country ways, because of those weary lessons, over the getting of which Mrs. Falconer kept as strict a watch as ever; while to Robert the evening journey, his violin and Miss St. John left at Rothieden, grew more than tame. The return was almost as happy an event to him as the first going. Now he could resume his lessons with the soutar. With Shargar it was otherwise. The freedom for so much longer from Mrs. Falconer's eyes was in itself so much of a positive pleasure, that the walk twice a day, the fresh air, and the scents and sounds of the country, only came in as supplementary. But I do not believe the boy even then had so much happiness as when he was beaten and starved by his own mother. And Robert, growing more and more absorbed in his own thoughts and pursuits, paid him less and less attention as the weeks went on, till Shargar at length judged it for a time an evil day on which he first had slept under old Ronald Falconer's kilt. CHAPTER XVIII. NATURE PUTS IN A CLAIM. Before the day of return arrived, Robert had taken care to remove the violin from his bedroom, and carry it once more to its old retreat in Shargar's garret. The very first evening, however, that grannie again spent in her own arm-chair, he hied from the house as soon as it grew dusk, and made his way with his brown-paper parcel to Sandy Elshender's. Entering the narrow passage from which his shop door opened, and hearing him hammering away at a sole, he stood and unfolded his treasure, then drew a low sigh from her with his bow, and awaited the result. He heard the lap-stone fall thundering on the floor, and, like a spider from his cavern, Dooble Sanny appeared in the door, with the bend-leather in one hand, and the hammer in the other. 'Lordsake, man! hae ye gotten her again? Gie's a grup o' her!' he cried, dropping leather and hammer. 'Na, na,' returned Robert, retreating towards the outer door. 'Ye maun sweir upo' her that, whan I want her, I sall hae her ohn demur, or I sanna lat ye lay roset upo' her.' 'I swear 't, Robert; I sweir 't upo' her,' said the soutar hurriedly, stretching out both his hands as if to receive some human being into his embrace. Robert placed the violin in those grimy hands. A look of heavenly delight dawned over the hirsute and dirt-besmeared countenance, which drooped into tenderness as he drew the bow across the instrument, and wiled from her a thin wail as of sorrow at their long separation. He then retreated into his den, and was soon sunk in a trance, deaf to everything but the violin, from which no entreaties of Robert, who longed for a lesson, could rouse him; so that he had to go home grievously disappointed, and unrewarded for the risk he had run in venturing the stolen visit.