They returned to the dreary house, and after a simple meal such as both had used to partake of in their boyhood, they sat by the fire, Andrew in his mother's chair, Robert in the same chair in which he had learned his Sallust and written his versions. Andrew sat for a while gazing into the fire, and Robert sat watching his face, where in the last few months a little feeble fatherhood had begun to dawn.
'It was there, father, that grannie used to sit, every day, sometimes looking in the fire for hours, thinking about you, I know,' Robert said at length.
Andrew stirred uneasily in his chair.
'How do you know that?' he asked.
'If there was one thing I could be sure of, it was when grannie was thinking about you, father. Who wouldn't have known it, father, when her lips were pressed together, as if she had some dreadful pain to bear, and her eyes were looking away through the fire—so far away! and I would speak to her three times before she would answer? She lived only to think about God and you, father. God and you came very close together in her mind. Since ever I can remember, almost, the thought of you was just the one thing in this house.'
Then Robert began at the beginning of his memory, and told his father all that he could remember. When he came to speak about his solitary musings in the garret, he said—and long before he reached this part, he had relapsed into his mother tongue:
'Come and luik at the place, father. I want to see 't again, mysel'.'
He rose. His father yielded and followed him. Robert got a candle in the kitchen, and the two big men climbed the little narrow stair and stood in the little sky of the house, where their heads almost touched the ceiling.
'I sat upo' the flure there,' said Robert, 'an' thoucht and thoucht what I wad du to get ye, father, and what I wad du wi' ye whan I had gotten ye. I wad greit whiles, 'cause ither laddies had a father an' I had nane. An' there's whaur I fand mamma's box wi' the letter in 't and her ain picter: grannie gae me that ane o' you. An' there's whaur I used to kneel doon an' pray to God. An' he's heard my prayers, and grannie's prayers, and here ye are wi' me at last. Instead o' thinkin' aboot ye, I hae yer ain sel'. Come, father, I want to say a word o' thanks to God, for hearin' my prayer.'
He took the old man's hand, led him to the bedside, and kneeled with him there.