eye meets many a miniature forest of
pine and birch, clothing portions of the lower hills, or nestling in
the crevices of the numerous watercourses which divide them. Strewn
irregularly over the landscape are white-walled, low-roofed farms and
crofters' dwellings--each in the embrace of sheltering barn and byre,
whose roofs of vivid scarlet often shine out in the sun from a setting
of green meadow or garden.

Our own habitation is simple enough, yet amply suffices for our needs.
It is just a stone cottage of two stories, and is connected by a small
cloister-like passage, Gothic in character, with the stone chapel which
is the scene of Val's priestly ministrations. This, too, is modest
enough. The windows are triple lancets, filled with opaque glass, the
altar of stone and marble, but simple in decoration, the tabernacle of
brass, and the eastern window--larger than the others--is embellished
with stained glass. It is in memory of our dear Dad, and besides his
patron, St. Andrew, it has the figures of St. Valentine and St. Edmund
on either side of the Apostle.

Within the house is a dining-room, a better furnished room for the
reception of important visitors, and a small den known as the "priest's
room," in which Val interviews members of his flock. Upstairs are
Val's study and my sitting-room, with our respective bed-chambers and a
spare one for a casual visitor. Kitchen offices and servants' quarters
are in a tiny special block.

Both chapel and house have been built by Val. I can recall his
pleading letters to Dad for help to raise a more worthy temple. The
Pater, with his characteristic caution, made it a condition of his help
that a new house should form part of the plan. If the old chapel was
as unworthy of its purpose as Val's descriptions painted it, the
dwelling must have been indeed poverty-stricken. From what I have
gleaned from the natives, both buildings must have surpassed in
meanness our wildest conceptions of them. But more upon that subject
later.

Any account of the chapel-house at Ardmuirland would be incomplete
without some reference to a personage who holds an important position
in the household, second only to that of the master of the house. This
is Penelope Spence, known to the world outside as "Mistress Spence,"
and to Val and myself as "Penny." She was our nurse long ago, and is
now the ruler of the domestic affairs of the chapel-house. A little,
round, white-haired, rosy-fac