I do not know what proficiency the boy had attained,
very likely not much, for a man can feel the music of his own bow,
or of his own lines, long before any one else can discover it. He
had already made a path, not exactly worn one, but trampled one,
through the neglected grass, and Miss St. John had no difficulty in
finding his entrance to the factory.
She felt a little eerie, as Robert would have called it, when she
passed into the waste silent place; for besides the wasteness and
the silence, motionless machines have a look of death about them, at
least when they bear such signs of disuse as those that filled these
rooms. Hearing no violin, she waited for a while in the
ground-floor of the building; but still hearing nothing, she
ascended to the first floor. Here, likewise, all was silence. She
hesitated, but at length ventured up the next stair, beginning,
however, to feel a little troubled as well as eerie, the silence was
so obstinately persistent. Was it possible that there was no violin
in that brown paper? But that boy could not be a liar. Passing
shelves piled-up with stores of old thread, she still went on, led
by a curiosity stronger than her gathering fear. At last she came
to a little room, the door of which was open, and there she saw
Robert lying on the floor with his head in a pool of blood.
Now Mary St. John was both brave and kind; and, therefore, though
not insensible to the fact that she too must be in danger where
violence had been used to a boy, she set about assisting him at
once.
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