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.