Whats Mines Mine, vol 2 | Page 6

the other faces present-and indeed his whole person and carriage
were similarly peculiar. Had Mercy, however, spent on him a little
more attention, the peculiarity would have explained itself. She would
have seen that, although everybody spoke to him, he never spoke in
reply--only made signs, sometimes with his lips, oftener with hand or
head: the man was deaf and dumb. But such was the keenness of his
observation that he understood everything said to him by one he knew,
and much from the lips of a stranger.
His companion was a youth whose age it would have been difficult to
guess. He looked a lad, and was not far from thirty. His clothing was
much like his father's--poor enough, yet with the air of being a better
suit than that worn every day. He was very pale and curiously freckled,
with great gray eyes like his father's, which had however an altogether
different expression. They looked dreamy, and seemed almost careless
of what passed before them, though now and then a certain quick, sharp
turn of the head showed him not devoid of attention.
The relation between the two was strangely interesting. Day and night
they were inseparable. Because the father was deaf, the son gave all his

attention to the sounds of the world; his soul sat in his ears, ever awake,
ever listening; while such was his confidence in his father's sight, that
he scarcely troubled himself to look where he set his feet. His
expression also was peculiar, partly from this cause, mainly from a
deeper. It was a far-away look, which a common glance would have
taken to indicate that he was "not all there." In a lowland parish he
would have been regarded as little better than a gifted idiot; in the
mountains he was looked upon as a seer, one in communion with
higher powers. Whether his people were of this opinion from being all
fools together, and therefore unable to know a fool, or the lowland
authorities would have been right in taking charge of him, let him who
pleases judge or misjudge for himself. What his own thought of him
came out in the name they gave him: "Rob of the Angels," they called
him. He was nearly a foot shorter than his father, and very thin. Some
said he looked always cold; but I think that came of the wonderful
peace on his face, like the quiet of a lake over which lies a thin mist.
Never was stronger or fuller devotion manifested by son to father than
by Rob of the Angels to Hector of the Stags. His filial love and faith
were perfect. While they were together, he was in his own calm
elysium; when they were apart, which was seldom for more than a few
minutes, his spirit seemed always waiting. I believe his notions of God
his father, and Hector his father, were strangely mingled--the more
perhaps that the two fathers were equally silent. It would have been a
valuable revelation to some theologians to see in those two what
<i>love might mean.
So gentle was Rob of the Angels, that all the women, down to the
youngest maid-child, gave him a compassionate, mother-like love. He
had lost his mother when he was an infant; the father had brought him
up with his own hand, and from the moment of his mother's departure
had scarce let him out of his sight; but the whole woman-remnant of
the clan was as a mother to the boy. And from the first they had so
talked to him of his mother, greatly no doubt through the feeling that
from his father he could learn nothing of her, that now his mother
seemed to him everywhere: he could not see God; why should not his
mother be there though he could not see her! No wonder the man was
peaceful!
Many would be inclined to call the two but poachers and

vagabonds--vagabonds because they lived in houses not quite made
with hands, for they had several dwellings that were mostly
caves--which yet they contrived to make warm and comfortable; and
poachers because they lived by the creatures which God scatters on his
hills for his humans. Let those who inherit or purchase, avenge the
breach of law; but let them not wonder when those who are disinherited
and sold, cry out against the breach of higher law!
The land here had never, partly from the troubles besetting its owners,
but more from their regard for the poor, of the clan, been with any care
preserved; little notice was ever taken of what game was killed, or who
killed it. At the same time any wish of the chief with regard to the deer,
of which Rob's father for one knew every antlered