Betty had heard the violin, and had flown to the parlour in the belief that, unable to get any one to heed him at the factory, the ghost had taken Janet's advice, and come home.

But his wife smiled a smile of contempt, went with Betty to the kitchen--over which Robert's room lay--heard the sounds, put off her creaking shoes, stole up-stairs on her soft white lambswool stockings, and caught the pair.

The violin was seized, put in its case, and carried off; and Mrs.Falconer rejoiced to think she had broken a gin set by Satan for the unwary feet of her poor Robert.

Little she knew the wonder of that violin--how it had kept the soul of her husband alive! Little she knew how dangerous it is to shut an open door, with ever so narrow a peep into the eternal, in the face of a son of Adam! And little she knew how determinedly and restlessly a nature like Robert's would search for another, to open one possibly which she might consider ten times more dangerous than that which she had closed.
When Alexander heard of the affair, he was at first overwhelmed with the misfortune; but gathering a little heart at last, he set to 'working,' as he said himself, 'like a verra deevil'; and as he was the best shoemaker in the town, and for the time abstained utterly from whisky, and all sorts of drink but well-water, he soon managed to save the money necessary, and redeem the old fiddle.

But whether it was from fancy, or habit, or what, even Robert's inexperienced ear could not accommodate itself, save under protest, to the instrument which once his teacher had considered all but perfect; and it needed the master's finest touch to make its tone other than painful to the sense of the neophyte.
No one can estimate too highly the value of such a resource to a man like the shoemaker, or a boy like Robert.