At that, and when judging from the tone of his voice I expected him to break out with fresh oaths and curses, there was instead an astonishing silence, which fell for me at an unlucky moment, for forgetting, in my desire to see as well as hear, the risk I ran, I had crept down the stairs, and now lacked but a pace of seeing into the room. The noise ceasing, I dared neither take that step nor retreat; and it was only when the silence had continued so long that curiosity overcame fear, that I ventured the advance, and looking in, saw that the girl, her fire and fury gone, was leaning against the wall beside the hearth, her face averted; while Ferguson himself, in an attitude of dejection scarcely less marked, stood near her, his head bowed and his blood-shot eyes fixed on the fire. "Ay, he lived honestly, your father," he muttered at last. "It is true, my lass. I grant it. But he had a fair wind, had Alan, and a short course; and if he had lived to be sixty, God knows! We are what we are made. I mind him well, and the burn we fished and the pickle things we took out, and your mother that played with us in her cutty sark, and not a shoe between us nor a bodle of money; but the green hills round us, and all we knew of the world that it lay beyond them. And that was all your father ever knew, my lass. And well for him! Ay, well for him! But woe's me, and woe to the man who took my living, and woe to the evil King!" His voice was beginning to rise; in a moment he would have reached his usual pitch of denunciation, of which even now some of his many writings afford a pale reflection; but at the word _King_ there came a sharp knocking at the door, and he paused. For me, I turned in a panic, and, heedless what noise I made, hurried up the stairs. The steps creaked under me, but fortunately the knocking was repeated so quickly and persistently that it covered the sound of my flight; and before I had more than ensconced myself in the old place, Ferguson, doubtless in obedience to some signal, was at the door and had opened it. Immediately half-a-dozen men poured noisily in, breathing hard and growling in low tones, and passed into the room below. But until the outer door was closed and secured, nothing I could catch, though fear sharpened my ears, was said. Then, as Ferguson went in after them, one of the newcomers raised his voice in answer to a question, and cried with a rattling oath, "What is up? What is up, old fox? Why, all is up! And we'll all swing for it before the month is over, if we cannot clear out to-night! You are a clever one, Mr. Ferguson, but you are caught this time, with better men. God! if I had the sneak here that peached on us, I would cut his liver out! I would----"