opened outwards, and there she found herself, to her surprise,
in the heart of another dwelling, of lowlier aspect. She never saw
Robert; for while he approached with shoeless feet, she had been
glancing through the open door of the gable-room, and when he knelt, the
light which she held in her hand had, I presume, hidden him from her.
He, on his part, had not observed that the moveless door stood open at
last.

I have already said that the house adjoining had been built by Robert's
father. The lady's room was that which he had occupied with his wife,
and in it Robert had been born. The door, with its trap-stair, was
a natural invention for uniting the levels of the two houses, and a
desirable one in not a few of the forms which the weather assumed in
that region. When the larger house passed into other hands, it had
never entered the minds of the simple people who occupied the contiguous
dwellings, to build up the doorway between.

CHAPTER IX. A DISCOVERY.

The friendship of Robert had gained Shargar the favourable notice of
others of the school-public. These were chiefly of those who came from
the country, ready to follow an example set them by a town boy. When his
desertion was known, moved both by their compassion for him, and their
respect for Robert, they began to give him some portion of the dinner
they brought with them; and never in his life had Shargar fared so well
as for the first week after he had been cast upon the world. But in
proportion as their interest faded with the novelty, so their appetites
reasserted former claims of use and wont, and Shargar began once more
to feel the pangs of hunger. For all that Robert could manage to procure
for him without attracting the attention he was so anxious to avoid,
was little more than sufficient to keep his hunger alive, Shargar
being gifted with a great appetite, and Robert having no allowance of
pocket-money from his grandmother. The threepence he had been able to
spend on him were what remained of sixpence Mr. Innes had given him
for an exercise which he wrote in blank verse instead of in prose--an
achievement of which the school-master was proud, both from his
reverence for Milton, and from his inability to compose a metrical line
himself. And how and when he should ever possess another penny was even
unimaginable. Shargar's shilling was likewise spent. So Robert could but
go on pocketing instead of eating all that he dared, watching anxiously
for o