It was a cloudy night and still.Nothing was to be heard but his own footsteps.The cattle in the fields were all asleep.The larch and spruce trees on the top of the hill by the foot of which his road wound were still as clouds.He could just see the sky through their stems.It was washed with the faintest of light, for the moon, far below, was yet climbing towards the horizon.A star or two sparkled where the clouds broke, but so little light was there, that, until he had passed the moorland on the hill, he could not get the horror of moss-holes, and deep springs covered with treacherous green, out of his head.But he never thought of turning.When the fears of the way at length fell back and allowed his own thoughts to rise, the sense of a presence, or of something that might grow to a presence, was the first to awake in him.The stillness seemed to be thinking all around his head.But the way grew so dark, where it lay through a corner of the pine-wood, that he had to feel the edge of the road with his foot to make sure that he was keeping upon it, and the sense of the silence vanished.Then he passed a farm, and the motions of horses came through the dark, and a doubtful crow from a young inexperienced cock, who did not yet know the moon from the sun.Then a sleepy low in his ear startled him, and made him quicken his pace involuntarily.
By the time he reached Rothieden all the lights were out, and this was just what he wanted.
The economy of Dooble Sanny's abode was this: the outer door was always left on the latch at night, because several families lived in the house; the soutar's workshop opened from the passage, close to the outer door, therefore its door was locked; but the key hung on a nail just inside the soutar's bedroom.All this Robert knew.
Arrived at the house, he lifted the latch, closed the door behind him, took off his shoes once more, like a housebreaker, as indeed he was, although a righteous one, and felt his way to and up the stair to the bedroom.There was a sound of snoring within.The door was a little ajar.He reached the key and descended, his heart beating more and more wildly as he approached the realization of his hopes.
Gently as he could he turned it in the lock.In a moment more he had his hands on the spot where the shoemaker always laid his violin.But his heart sank within him: there was no violin there.
A blank of dismay held him both motionless and thoughtless; nor had he recovered his senses before he heard footsteps, which he well knew, approaching in the street.He slunk at once into a corner.
Elshender entered, feeling his way carefully, and muttering at his wife.He was tipsy, most likely, but that had never yet interfered with the safety of his fiddle: Robert heard its faint echo as he laid it gently down.Nor was he too tipsy to lock the door behind him, leaving Robert incarcerated amongst the old boots and leather and rosin.
For one moment only did the boy's heart fail him.The next he was in action, for a happy thought had already struck him.Hastily, that he might forestall sleep in the brain of the soutar, he undid his parcel, and after carefully enveloping his own violin in the paper, took the old wife of the soutar, and proceeded to perform upon her a trick which in a merry moment his master had taught him, and which, not without some feeling of irreverence, he had occasionally practised upon his own bonny lady.
The shoemaker's room was overhead; its thin floor of planks was the ceiling of the workshop.Ere Dooble Sanny was well laid by the side of his sleeping wife, he heard a frightful sound from below, as of some one tearing his beloved violin to pieces.No sound of rending coffin-planks or rising dead would have been so horrible in the ears of the soutar.He sprang from his bed with a haste that shook the crazy tenement to its foundation.
The moment Robert heard that, he put the violin in its place, and took his station by the door-cheek.The soutar came tumbling down the stair, and rushed at the door, but found that he had to go back for the key.When, with uncertain hand, he had opened at length, he went straight to the nest of his treasure, and Robert slipping out noiselessly, was in the next street before Dooble Sanny, having found the fiddle uninjured, and not discovering the substitution, had finished concluding that the whisky and his imagination had played him a very discourteous trick between them, and retired once more to bed.And not till Robert had cut his foot badly with a piece of glass, did he discover that he had left his shoes behind him.He tied it up with his handkerchief, and limped home the three miles, too happy to think of consequences.
Before he had gone far, the moon floated up on the horizon, large, and shaped like the broadside of a barrel.She stared at him in amazement to see him out at such a time of the night.But he grasped his violin and went on.He had no fear now, even when he passed again over the desolate moss, although he saw the stagnant pools glimmering about him in the moonlight.And ever after this he had a fancy for roaming at night.He reached home in safety, found the door as he had left it, and ascended to his bed, triumphant in his fiddle.
In the morning bloody prints were discovered on the stair, and traced to the door of his room.Miss Lammie entered in some alarm, and found him fast asleep on his bed, still dressed, with a brown-paper parcel in his arms, and one of his feet evidently enough the source of the frightful stain.She was too kind to wake him, and inquiry was postponed till they met at breakfast, to which he descended bare-footed, save for a handkerchief on the injured foot.
'Robert, my lad,' said Mr.Lammie, kindly, 'hoo cam ye by that bluidy fut?'