When he reached the kitchen door, he was struck with amazement and
for a moment with fresh fear. A light was shining into the transe
from the stair which went up at right angles from the end of it. He
knew it could not be grannie, and he heard Betty snoring in her own
den, which opened from the kitchen. He thought it must be Shargar
who had grown impatient; but how he had got hold of a light he could
not think. As soon as he turned the corner, however, the doubt was
changed into mystery. At the top of the broad low stair stood a
woman-form with a candle in her hand, gazing about her as if
wondering which way to go. The light fell full upon her face, the
beauty of which was such that, with her dress, which was
white--being, in fact, a nightgown--and her hair, which was hanging
loose about her shoulders and down to her waist, it led Robert at
once to the conclusion (his reasoning faculties already shaken by
the events of the night) that she was an angel come down to comfort
his grannie; and he kneeled involuntarily at the foot of the stair,
and gazed up at her, with the cakes in one hand, and the mug of
water in the other, like a meat-and-drink offering. Whether he had
closed his eyes or bowed his head, he could not say; but he became
suddenly aware that the angel had vanished--he knew not when, how,
or whither. This for a time confirmed his assurance that it was an
angel. And although he was undeceived before long, the impression
made upon him that night was never effaced. But, indeed, whatever
Falconer heard or saw was something more to him than it would have
been to anybody else.

Elated, though awed, by the vision, he felt his way up the stair in
the new darkness, as if walking in a holy dream, trod as if upon
sacred ground as he crossed the landing where the angel had
stood--went up and up, and found Shargar wide awake with expectant