It was a very bare little room in which the boy sat, but it was his favourite retreat. Behind thedoor, in a recess, stood an empty bedstead, without even a mattress upon it. This was the only pieceof furniture in the room, unless some shelves crowded with papers tied up in bundles, and acupboard in the wall, likewise filled with papers, could be called furniture. There was no carpet onthe floor, no windows in the walls. The only light came from the door, and from a small skylight inthe sloping roof, which showed that it was a garret-room. Nor did much light come from the opendoor, for there was no window on the walled stair to which it opened; only opposite the door a fewsteps led up into another garret, larger, but with a lower roof, unceiled, and perforated with two orthree holes, the panes of glass filling which were no larger than the small blue slates which coveredthe roof: from these panes a little dim brown light tumbled into the room where the boy sat on thefloor, with his head almost between his knees, thinking.But there was less light than usual in the room now, though it was only half-past two o'clock, andthe sun would not set for more than half-an-hour yet; for if Robert had lifted his head and lookedup, it would have been at, not through, the skylight. No sky was to be seen. A thick covering ofsnow lay over the glass. A partial thaw, followed by frost, had fixed it there-a mass of imperfectcells and confused crystals. It was a cold place to sit in, but the boy had some faculty for enduringcold when it was the price to be paid for solitude. And besides, when he fell into one of his thinkingmoods, he forgot, for a season, cold and everything else but what he was thinking about-a facultyfor which he was to be envied.If he had gone down the stair, which described half the turn of a screw in its descent, and hadcrossed the landing to which it brought him, he could have entered another bedroom, called thegable or rather ga'le room, equally at his service for retirement; but, though carpeted andcomfortably furnished, and having two windows at right angles, commanding two streets, for it wasa corner house, the boy preferred the garret-room-he could not tell why. Possibly, windows to thestreets were not congenial to the meditations in which, even now, as I have said, the boy indulged.