About the same hour, our friend Robin Hays was more than usually active in his mother's house, which we have already described, and which was known by the name of the "Gull's Nest." The old woman had experienced continued kindness from the few families of rank and wealth who at that time resided in Shepey. With a good deal of tact, she managed outwardly to steer clear of all party feuds; though people said she was by no means so simple as she pretended; but the universal sympathy of her neighbours was excited by her widowed and almost childless state--three fine sons having been slain during the civil wars--and the fourth, our acquaintance Robin, being singularly undervalued, on the ordinary principle, we may presume, that "a prophet hath no honour in his own country." This feeling of depreciation Robin certainly returned with interest, indulging a most bitter, and, occasionally, biting contempt for all the high and low in his vicinity, the family at Cecil Place forming the only exception. Despite his defects natural and acquired, he had, however, managed to gain the good opinion of Burrell of Burrell, who, though, frequently on the island, possessed only a small portion of land within its boundary. Into his service he entered for the purpose of accompanying the knight to London as travelling-groom; and he had rendered himself so useful while sojourning in the metropolis, that Burrell would fain have retained him in his employ--a project, however, to which Robin strenuously objected, the moment it was communicated to him. "Nature," he said, "had doubtless made him a bond-slave; but he liked her fetters so little, that he never would be slave to any one or any thing beside." He therefore returned to the "Gull's Nest" on the night his late master arrived at Cecil Place, from which his mother's home was distant about three miles.