Then it struck him awfully
that the same terrible passage must be gone through again. But he
rose to his feet, for he had no shoes on, and there was little
danger of making any noise, although it was pitch dark--he knew the
house so well. With gathering courage, he felt his way to the
kitchen, and there groped about; but he could find nothing beyond a
few quarters of oat-cake, which, with a mug of water, he proceeded
to carry up to Shargar in the garret.
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.
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