, where his grandmother sat meditating or reading, and
Shargar sat brooding over the freedom of the old days ere Mrs. Falconer
had begun to reclaim him. There he would seat himself once more at his
book--to rise again ere another hour had gone by, and hearken yet again
at her window whether the stream might not be flowing now. If he found
her at her instrument he would stand listening in earnest delight,
until the fear of being missed drove him in: this secret too might
be discovered, and this enchantress too sent, by the decree of his
grandmother, into the limbo of vanities. Thus strangely did his evening
life oscillate between the two peaceful negations of grannie's parlour
and the vital gladness of the unknown lady's window. And skilfully did
he manage his retreats and returns, curtailing his absences with such
moderation that, for a long time, they awoke no suspicion in the mind of
his grandmother.

I suspect myself that the old lady thought he had gone to his prayers in
the garret. And I believe she thought that he was praying for his dead
father; with which most papistical, and, therefore, most unchristian
observance, she yet dared not interfere, because she expected Robert to
defend himself triumphantly with the simple assertion that he did not
believe his father was dead. Possibly the mother was not sorry that
her poor son should be prayed for, in case he might be alive after all,
though she could no longer do so herself--not merely dared not, but
persuaded herself that she would not. Robert, however, was convinced
enough, and hopeless enough, by this time, and had even less temptation
to break the twentieth commandment by praying for the dead, than his
grandmother had; for with all his imaginative outgoings after his
father, his love to him was as yet, compared to that father's mother's,
'as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.'

Shargar would glance up at him with a queer look as he came in from
these excursions, drop his head over his task again, look busy and
miserable, and all would glide on as before.

When the first really summer weather came, Mr. Lammie one day paid
Mrs. Falconer a second visit. He had not been able to get over the
remembrance of the desolation in which he had left her. But he could
do nothing for her, he thought, till it was warm weather. He was
accompanied by his daughter, a woman approaching the further verge of
youth, bulky and florid, and as full of tenderness as her l