When Robert left the cottage, he found the sky partly clouded and the air cold. The nearest way home was across the barley-stubble of the day's reaping, which lay under a little hill covered with various species of the pine. His own soul, after the restful day he had spent, and under the reaction from the new excitement of the stories he had been reading, was like a quiet, moonless night. The thought of his mother came back upon him, and her written words, 'O Lord, my heart is very sore'; and the thought of his father followed that, and he limped slowly home, laden with mournfulness. As he reached the middle of the field, the wind was suddenly there with a low sough from out of the north-west. The heads of barley in the sheaves leaned away with a soft rustling from before it; and Robert felt for the first time the sadness of a harvest-field. Then the wind swept away to the pine-covered hill, and raised a rushing and a wailing amongst its thin-clad branches, and to the ear of Robert the trees were singing over again in their night solitudes the air sung by the cottar's family. When he looked to the north-west, whence the wind came, he saw nothing but a pale cleft in the sky. The meaning, the music of the night awoke in his soul; he forgot his lame foot, and the weight of Mr. Lammie's great boots, ran home and up the stair to his own room, seized his violin with eager haste, nor laid it down again till he could draw from it, at will, a sound like the moaning of the wind over the stubble-field. Then he knew that he could play the Flowers of the Forest. The Wind that Shakes the Barley cannot have been named from the barley after it was cut, but while it stood in the field: the Flowers of the Forest was of the gathered harvest.
He tried the air once over in the dark, and then carried his violin down to the room where Mr. and Miss Lammie sat.
'I think I can play 't noo, Mr. Lammie,' he said abruptly.
'Play what, callant?' asked his host.
'The Flooers o' the Forest.'
'Play awa' than.'
And Robert played—not so well as he had hoped. I dare say it was a humble enough performance, but he gave something at least of the expression Mr. Lammie desired. For, the moment the tune was over, he exclaimed,
'Weel dune, Robert man! ye'll be a fiddler some day yet!'
And Robert was well satisfied with the praise.
'I wish yer mother had been alive,' the farmer went on. 'She wad hae been rael prood to hear ye play like that. Eh! she likit the fiddle weel. And she culd play bonny upo' the piana hersel'. It was something to hear the twa o' them playing thegither, him on the fiddle—that verra fiddle o' 's father's 'at ye hae i' yer han'—and her on the piana. Eh! but she was a bonnie wuman as ever I saw, an' that quaiet! It's my belief she never thocht aboot her ain beowty frae week's en' to week's en', and that's no sayin' little—is 't, Aggy?'