The household always retired early--earlier on Saturday night in
preparation for the Sabbath--and by ten o'clock grannie and Betty
were in bed. Robert, indeed, was in bed too; but he had lain down
in his clothes, waiting for such time as might afford reasonable
hope of his grandmother being asleep, when he might both ease
Shargar's hunger and get to sleep himself. Several times he got up,
resolved to make his attempt; but as often his courage failed and he
lay down again, sure that grannie could not be asleep yet. When the
clock beside him struck eleven, he could bear it no longer, and
finally rose to do his endeavour.

Opening the door of the closet slowly and softly, he crept upon his
hands and knees into the middle of the parlour, feeling very much
like a thief, as, indeed, in a measure he was, though from a
blameless motive. But just as he had accomplished half the distance
to the door, he was arrested and fixed with terror; for a deep sigh
came from grannie's bed, followed by the voice of words. He thought
at first that she had heard him, but he soon found that he was
mistaken. Still, the fear of discovery held him there on all fours,
like a chained animal. A dull red gleam, faint and dull, from the
embers of the fire, was the sole light in the room. Everything so
common to his eyes in the daylight seemed now strange and eerie in
the dying coals, and at what was to the boy the unearthly hour of
the night.

He felt that he ought not to listen to grannie, but terror made him
unable to move.

'Och hone! och hone!' said grannie from the bed. 'I've a sair, sair
hert. I've a sair hert i' my breist, O Lord! thoo knowest. My ain