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