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
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.
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