A Stranger Came Ashore Read Free

again.”
    Still Robbie hesitated, for there was something he did not like about the tone of the muffled voice. His father only laughed at it, however, and reached over Robbie’s head to snuff out the kollie.
    “Aye, surely,” he agreed as he did this. Then, with a goodnight to Finn Learson from both him and Robbie, they too went ben to their beds.
    They were proper old-fashioned Shetland beds, these, made like a large box complete with a lid on top and a sliding door in one side. There were air-holes in the sliding doors, neatly pierced in the shape of hearts and diamonds; the box-beds themselves stood on legs that raised them above draughts, and there were three of them in the room – one for Peter and Janet, one for Elspeth, and one that Robbie shared with Old Da.
    Robbie was dead tired by this time, and he lost not a moment in getting in beside Old Da. Almost instantly then, he was asleep, for the bed was comfortable and Old Da had warmed it for him. Butjust as suddenly, it seemed to him, he was awake again, wondering how long he had slept and what had happened to wake him.
    There was no sound or movement in the ben room, he realised. But there
was
a sound coming from somewhere – the sound of a fiddle very softly played and near at hand – and for several startled moments he lay wondering who on earth could be playing the fiddle at that hour of the night.
    Robbie’s surprise was soon over, however, and it was uneasiness that gripped him then; for by the end of those first few moments he had realised that the music was coming from the but end of the house where his father’s fiddle hung. And yet his father was lying asleep in the box-bed a few feet away from his own! The sliding door of this bed was open, and he could see his father there – which meant that the only person who could be playing the fiddle was the stranger, Finn Learson. And why should he be doing that at such an hour?
    Moreover, Robbie thought, there was something very odd about the music itself, something very eerie and mysterious, for there was no tune to it – or nothing he could recognise as a tune, at least. It was just like voices sliding up and down a scale, in fact; high voices, echoing very sad and sweet in some hollow place, and in spite of the warmth of the bed, the sound they made was beginning to send shivers up and down his back.
    Crouching lower into the warmth, Robbie tried not to hear the voices; but he was curious about them, as well as uneasy. Besides which, he told himself, Finn Learson had no
right
to be playing his Da’s fiddle, and he had a good mind to say so to his very face! This was the very thought to give his curiosity the spur it needed, and gaining courage from it, he slipped cautiously out of bed.
    A draught of cold air blew around his bare legs. The floor of the ben room was cold too, for it was only beaten earth, hard-packed and polished from the use of many years. With his toes curling away from the feel of this floor, Robbie padded to the door of theben room. For a moment he stood there, shivering as much from the cold now as from uneasiness. Then, carefully, he advanced a hand to the door knob.
    The noise of Tam growling began to sound through the music; and instantly on this, it stopped. Tam’s growls grew louder, then began to die again; and tightening his grasp on the knob, Robbie pulled the door open far enough to allow him to see into the but end.
    It was a roomful of strange shapes and shadows that met his eye, for the fire was still sending out a red glow that lit some things and left others in darkness. Even so, he saw that his father’s fiddle was gone from its usual place on the wall, and there was no form stretched out under the blanket on the restin’ chair. The fiddle now lay on top of this blanket, as if Finn Learson had hurriedly placed it there; and Finn Learson himself was kneeling on one knee in front of the fire, with Tam crouching in front of him.
    The dog’s back was towards Robbie,