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 opened from the parlour close to the head
of his grandmother's bed. It was just large enough to hold a
good-sized bed with curtains, a chest of drawers, a bureau, a large
eight-day clock, and one chair, leaving in the centre about five
feet square for him to move about in. There was more room as well
as more comfort in the bed. He was never allowed a candle, for
light enough came through from the parlour, his grandmother thought;
so he was soon extended between the whitest of cold sheets, with his
knees up to his chin, and his thoughts following his lost father
over all spaces of the earth with which his geography-book had made
him acquainted.

He was in the habit of leaving his closet and creeping through his
grandmother's room before she was awake--or at least before she had
given any signs to the small household that she was restored to
consciousness, and that the life of the house must proceed. He
therefore found no difficulty in liberating Shargar from his prison,
except what arose from the boy's own unwillingness to forsake his
comfortable quarters for the fierce encounter of the January blast
which awaited him. But Robert did not turn him out before the last
moment of safety had arrived; for, by the aid of signs known to
himself, he watched the progress of his grandmother's dressing--an
operation which did not consume much of the morning, scrupulous as
she was with regard to neatness and cleanliness--until Betty was