Robert had brought him, as if he had not seen food that day. As soon as
they were finished, he begged for a drink of water, which Robert managed
to procure for him. He then left him for the night, for his longer
absence might have brought his grandmother after him, who had perhaps
only too good reasons for being doubtful, if not suspicious, about boys
in general, though certainly not about Robert in particular. He carried
with him his books from the other garret-room where he kept them,
and sat down at the table by his grandmother, preparing his Latin and
geography by her lamp, while she sat knitting a white stocking with
fingers as rapid as thought, never looking at her work, but staring
into the fire, and seeing visions there which Robert would have given
everything he could call his own to see, and then would have given his
life to blot out of the world if he had seen them. Quietly the evening
passed, by the peaceful lamp and the cheerful fire, with the Latin on
the one side of the table, and the stocking on the other, as if ripe and
purified old age and hopeful unstained youth had been the only extremes
of humanity known to the world. But the bitter wind was howling by fits
in the chimney, and the offspring of a nobleman and a gipsy lay asleep
in the garret, covered with the cloak of an old Highland rebel.

At nine o'clock, Mrs. Falconer rang the bell for Betty, and they had
worship. Robert read a chapter, and his grandmother prayed an extempore
prayer, in which they that looked at the wine when it was red in the
cup, and they that worshipped the woman clothed in scarlet and seated
upon the seven hills, came in for a strange mixture, in which the
vengeance yielded only to the pity.

'Lord, lead them to see the error of their ways,' she cried. 'Let the
rod of thy wrath awake the worm of their conscience that they may know
verily that there is a God that ruleth in the earth. Dinna lat them gang
to hell, O Lord, we beseech thee.'

As soon as prayers were over, Robert had a tumbler of milk and some more
oat-cake, and was sent to bed; after which it was impossible for him to
hold any further communication with Shargar. For his grandmother, little
as one might suspect it who entered the parlour in the daytime, always
slept in that same room, in a bed closed in with doors like those of a
large press in the wall, while Robert slept in a little closet, looking
into a garden at the back of the house, the door of which opene