Robert Falconer

ner, and a life lay before him

He had covered it over and turned aw

him, and his future must be born. All he cared about was to leave the empty garments of his dead behind him-the sky and the fields, the houses and the gardens which those dead

in his face with surprise, but seeing trouble there, asked no questio

rought you back? Ah! I see. Poor Ericson! I a

d Robert. 'I have taken a great longing for trave

ill. Where do y

ind myself wanting to go somewhere. You'

ctly. You shall do just as you please.-Have

re willing I should spe

t with. Write at once when you want more. Don't be too savin

ere long part with that too. That would have been in lowest deeps of sorrow to open a yet lower deep of horror. But Robert would have refused, and would have been right in refus

s he had a glimpse of what his friend mean

. I'll be yer man. I'll put on a livery coat, an' gang wi

ve you with me. I've come into trouble,

ken. Puir M

Don't ask me any questions. I've said more t

, Robert. But am I n

Perhaps we may

kle to say, Robert,

d about everything, Sharga

rived from the days when his mother thrashed him. 'But, eh! Robert, gin it had only p

e that curst villain yer brither, I suppose?'

I'll stick to my ain mither. S

as far 's ye're concerned. Gin he dinna something o

and spent the night there. In the mornin

wn natural clime, would a few words cause the clouds that enveloped this period of his history to dispart, and grant me a peep into the phantasm of his past. I suspect, however, that much of it left upon his mind no reca

man heart. One thing alone I will venture to affirm-that bitterness against either of his friends, whose spirits rushed together and lef

, of strange constellations, of things in heaven and earth which no one could have seen but himself, called up by the magic of his words. A silent man in company, he

hurch would afford him the possibility of ascent. Breathing the air of its highest region, he found himself vaguely strengthened, yes comforted. One peculiar feeling he had, into which I could enter only upon happy occ

n without which no man's faith can hold its own. But the effort of too many of her priests goes to conceal from the worshippers the fact that there is such a stair, with a door to it out of the church. It looks as if t

t, 'that, in order to ascend, they

ver knew a man in whom the inward was so constantly clothed upon by the outward, whose ordinary habits were so symbolic of his spiritual tastes, or whose enjoyment of the sight of his eyes and the hearing of his ears was so much informed by his highest feelings. He regarded a

death he cherished the fancy of writing a book in that cottage, with the grand city to which London looks a modern mushroom, its thousand roofs with row upon row of windows in them-often

rer, growing in sweet fulness as it came, till at length a slow torrent of tinklings went past his window in the street below. It was the flow of a thousand little currents of sound, a gliding of silvery threads, like the talking of water-ripples against the side of a barge in a slow canal-all as soft as the moonlight, as exquisite as an odour, each sound tenderly truncated and dull. A great multitude of sheep was shifting its quarters in the night, whence and whither and why he never

ought of which he was conscious. It may be that the sound of the sheep-bells made him think of the shepherds that watched their flocks by night, and they of the multitude of the heavenly host, and t

lace in the midst, all at once he beheld, towering above him, on a height that overlooked the whole city and surrounding country, a great crucifix. The form of the Lord of Life still hung in the face of

the ears of the inner hearing, 'My peace I give unto you.' They were words he had known from the earliest memorial time. He had heard them in infancy, in childhood, in boyhood, in youth: now first in manhood it flashed upon him that the Lord did really mean that the peace of his soul should be the peace of their sou

, caught up his stick, an

arose from the heath around him; the odour of its flowers entered his dulled sense; the wind kissed him on the forehead; the sky domed up over his head; and the clouds veiled the distant mountain tops like the smoke of incense ascending from the altars of the worshipping earth. All Nature began to minister to one who had begun to lift his head from the baptism of fire. He had thought that Nature could never more be anything to him; and she was waiting on him like a mother. The next moment he was offended with himself for receiv

re simply too good to last-using the phrase not in the unbelieving sense in which it is generally used, expressing the conviction that God is a hard father, fond of disappointing his children, but to express the fact that intensity and endurance cannot yet c

the creatures had been, as the corpse under the sheet of death is like a man. He came amongst the valleys at their feet, with their blue-green waters hurrying seawards-from stony heights of air into the mass of 'the restless wavy plain'; with their sides of rock rising in gigantic terrace after terrace up to the heavens; with their scaling pines, erect and slight, cone-head aspiring above cone-head, ambitious to clothe the bare mass with green, till failing at length in their upward efforts, the savage rock shot away and beyond and above them, the white and blue glaciers clinging cold and cruel to their ragged sides, and the dead blank of wh

ver sank its other wall, steep as a plumb-line could have made it, of solid rock. On his right lay green fields of clover and strange grasses. Ever and anon from the cleft steamed up great blinding clouds of mist, which now wandered about over the nations of rocks on the mountain side beyond the gulf, now wrapt himself in their bewildering folds. In one moment the whole creation had vanished, and there seemed sca

it on all sides. It stands as between heaven and hell, suspended between peaks and gulfs. The wind must roar awfully there i

tially dyed a sulky orange red. Then all faded into gray. But as the sunlight vanished, a veil sank from the face of the moon, already half-way to the zenith, and she gathered courage and shone, till the mountain looked lovely as a ghost in the gleam of its snow and the glimmer of its glaciers. 'Ah!' thought Falconer, 'such a peace at last is all a man can l

ht a man born stone-deaf estimate the power of sweet sounds, or he who k

e place. He opened his valise to get some lighter garments. His eye fell on a New Testament. Dr. Anderson h

tered the valley of Rothieden: on the top of the stone grew a little heather; and beside it, bending towards the water, was a silver birch. He sat down on the foot of the rock, shut in by the high grassy banks from the gaze of the awful mountains. The sole unrest was the run of the water beside him, and it sounded so homely, that he began to jabber Scotch to it. He forgot that this stream was born in the clouds, far up where that pea

? Perhaps it was in virtue of that peace, whatever it was, that he was the Prince of Peace. Whatever peace he had must be the highest and best peace-therefore the one peace for a man to seek, if indeed, as the words of the Lord seemed to imply, a man was capable of possessing it. He re

the whole pass

not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not

dly knew how, that the peace of Jesus (although, of course, he could not know what it was like till he had it) must have been a peace that came from the doing of the will of his Father. From the account he gave of the discoveries he then made, I ve

s business is to d

akes upon himself

a man must never be afr

e God with all his heart, a

a little upon these points, a new set of questions a

a man? How am I to be sure that such as he says is th

but read the four gospels and ponder over them. Therefore it is not surprising that he should have already become so familiar with the go

l know of the doctrine, whether it be

t a conviction of the truth or falsehood of all that he said, namely, th

ed unreal, and contradictory to the nature around him, was no proof that they were not of God. But on the other hand, that they demanded what seemed to him unjust,-that these demands were founded on what seemed to him untruth attributed to God, on ways of thinking and feeling which are certainly degrading in a man,-these were reasons of the very

ce. Yet not less than a fortnight had he been brooding and pondering over the question, as he wandered up and down that burnside,

which troubled him. Next it grew plain that what he came to do, was just to lead his life. That he should do the work, such as recorded, and much besides, that the Father gave him to do-this was the will of God concerning him. With this perception arose the conviction t

for actio

in his hand, and went down the mountain, not knowing whith

is billows go over me. If there is such a God, he knows what a pain I bear. His will be done. Jesus thought it well that his will should be done to the

ay at the root of his character, at the root of all that he did, felt, and became, was childlike simplicity and purity of nature. If the sins of h

oor, had he heard word or conjecture concerning him. If he were to set out to find him now, it would be to search the earth for one who might have vanished from it years ago. He might as well search the streets of a great city for a lost jewel. When the time came for him to find his father, if such an hour was written in the decrees of-I dare not

be as good-possibly, from the variety of the experience, better? But how was it to be decided? By submitting the matte

or two years. The doctor replied that of course he would rather have him at home, but that he was confident Robert knew best what was best for himself; th