hunger. He, too, had caught a glimmer of the light. But Robert did
not tell him what he had seen. That was too sacred a subject to
enter upon with Shargar, and he was intent enough upon his supper
not to be inquisitive.

Robert left him to finish it at his leisure, and returned to cross
his grandmother's room once more, half expecting to find the angel
standing by her bedside. But all was dark and still. Creeping back
as he had come, he heard her quiet, though deep, breathing, and his
mind was at ease about her for the night. What if the angel he had
surprised had only come to appear to grannie in her sleep? Why not?
There were such stories in the Bible, and grannie was certainly as
good as some of the people in the Bible that saw angels--Sarah, for
instance. And if the angels came to see grannie, why should they
not have some care over his father as well? It might be--who could
tell?

It is perhaps necessary to explain Robert's vision. The angel was
the owner of the boxes he had seen at The Bear's Head. Looking
around her room before going to bed, she had seen a trap in the
floor near the wall, and raising it, had discovered a few steps of a
stair leading down to a door. Curiosity naturally led her to
examine it. The key was in the lock. It opened outwards, and there
she found herself, to her surprise, in the heart of another
dwelling, of lowlier aspect. She never saw Robert; for while he
approached with shoeless feet, she had been glancing through the
open door of the gable-room, and when he knelt, the light which she
held in her hand had, I presume, hidden him from her. He, on his
part, had not observed that the moveless door stood open at last.