Dull Betty never
suspected what they were about. They were ranging the place like
two tiger-cats whose whelps had been carried off in their
absence--questing, with nose to earth and tail in air, for the scent
of their enemy. My simile has carried me too far: it was only a
dead old gentleman's violin that a couple of boys was after--but
with what eagerness, and, on the part of Robert, what alternations
of hope and fear! And Shargar was always the reflex of Robert, so
far as Shargar could reflect Robert. Sometimes Robert would stop,
stand still in the middle of the room, cast a mathematical glance of
survey over its cubic contents, and then dart off in another
inwardly suggested direction of search. Shargar, on the other hand,
appeared to rummage blindly without a notion of casting the
illumination of thought upon the field of search. Yet to him fell
the success. When hope was growing dim, after an hour and a half of
vain endeavour, a scream of utter discordance heralded the
resurrection of the lady of harmony. Taught by his experience of
his wild mother's habits to guess at those of douce Mrs. Falconer,
Shargar had found the instrument in her bed at the foot, between the
feathers and the mattress. For one happy moment Shargar was the
benefactor, and Robert the grateful recipient of favour. Nor, I do
believe, was this thread of the still thickening cable that bound
them ever forgotten: broken it could not be.
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