All he was told of his father was that he had gone abroad. His
grandmother would never talk about him, although he was her own son.
When the boy ventured to ask a question about where he was, or when
he would return, she always replied--'Bairns suld haud their
tongues.' Nor would she vouchsafe another answer to any question
that seemed to her from the farthest distance to bear down upon that
subject. 'Bairns maun learn to haud their tongues,' was the sole
variation of which the response admitted. And the boy did learn to
hold his tongue. Perhaps he would have thought less about his
father if he had had brothers or sisters, or even if the nature of
his grandmother had been such as to admit of their relationship
being drawn closer--into personal confidence, or some measure of
familiarity. How they stood with regard to each other will soon
appear.

Whether the visions vanished from his brain because of the
thickening of his blood with cold, or he merely acted from one of
those undefined and inexplicable impulses which occasion not a few
of our actions, I cannot tell, but all at once Robert started to his
feet and hurried from the room. At the foot of the garret stair,
between it and the door of the gable-room already mentioned, stood
another door at right angles to both, of the existence of which the
boy was scarcely aware, simply because he had seen it all his life
and had never seen it open. Turning his back on this last door,
which he took for a blind one, he went down a short broad stair, at
the foot of which was a window. He then turned to the left into a
long flagged passage or transe, passed the kitchen door on the one
hand, and the double-leaved street door on the other; but, instead
of going into the parlour, the door of which closed the transe, he
stopped at the passage-window on the right, and there stood looking