“You will come in now, my dear, and rest. You have had a hard day: and everything is worse when you are tired. Janet has laid your supper ready; and when you have rested, then we’ll hear all that has happened--and think,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, “what to do.” She did not dare to look at the stranger directly, lest Robbie should discover him; but she gave a glance, a movement, in his direction, an appeal--which that close observer understood well enough. She had the thought that her son might escape him yet--at which the other smiled in his heart, but humoured her so far that he did not say anything yet. “It is easy for you,” said Robbie, with another profound sigh, “to think what you will do--you neither know the man, nor his cleverness, nor the weak deevil I am. I’ll not go in. That craze of yours for all your windows open--they’re not shut yet, by George! and it’s ten o’clock and more--takes off any feeling of safety there might be in the house. I shall sit here and watch for him. At least I can see him coming, here.” “Robbie, oh Robbie! come in, come in, if you would not kill me!” “Don’t take so much trouble, old lady,” said the stranger from the bench, at the sound of whose voice Robbie started so violently, taking up the chair in his hand, that his mother made a spring and placed herself between them. “I see what you want to do, but you can’t do it. It’s fate, as he says; and he’ll calm down when he knows I am here. So, Bob, you stole a march on me,” he said, raising himself up. He was the taller man, but Robbie was the heavier. They stood for a moment--two dark shadows in the night--so near that the whiteness of Mrs Ogilvy’s shawl brushed them on either side. “You’re here, then, already!” Robbie held the chair for a moment like a weapon of offence, and then pitched it from him. “What’s the good? I might have known, if there was an unlikely spot on the earth, that’s where you would be found.” “You thought this an unlikely spot? Why, you’ve told me of it often enough, old fellow: safety itself and quiet; and your mother that would feed us like fighting cocks. Where else did you think I would come? The t’other places are too hot for us both. But I say, old lady, I should not mind having a look at that supper now: we’ve only been waiting for Rob, don’t you know?”