e kindled in the open air,
all the inmates could sit around it in a wide circle--the women
invariably ranged on the one side, and the men on the other; the
apartment beyond was partitioned into small and very dark bed-rooms;
while, further on still, there was a closet with a little window in it,
which was assigned to my mother and me; and beyond all lay what was
emphatically "the room," as it was built of stone, and had both window
and chimney, with chairs, and table, and chest of drawers, a large
box-bed, and a small but well-filled bookcase. And "the room" was, of
course, for the time, my cousin the merchant's apartment,--his dormitory
at night, and the hospitable refectory in which he entertained his
friends by day.

My aunt's family was one of solid worth. Her husband--a compactly-built,
stout-limbed, elderly Highlander, rather below the middle size, of grave
and somewhat melancholy aspect, but in reality of a temperament rather
cheerful than otherwise--had been somewhat wild in his young days. He
had been a good shot and a skilful angler, and had danced at bridals,
and, as was common in the Highlands at the time, at lykewakes; nay, on
one occasion he had succeeded in inducing a new-made widow to take the
floor in a strathspey, beside her husband's corpse when every one else
had failed to bring her up, by roguishly remarking, in her hearing, that
whoever else might have refused to dance at poor Donald's death wake, he
little thought it would have been she. But a great change had passed
over him; and he was now a staid, thoughtful, God-fearing man, much
respected in the Barony for honest worth and quiet unobtrusive
consistency of character. His wife had been brought, at an early age,
under the influence of Donald Roy's ring, and had, like her mother, been
the means of introducing the vitalities of religion into her household.
They had two other sons besides the merchant--both well-built, robust
men, somewhat taller than their father, and of such character, that one
of my Cromarty cousins, in making out his way, by dint of frequent and
sedulous inquiry, to their dwelling, found the general verdict of the
district embodied in the very bad English of a poor old woman, who,
after doing her best to direct him, certified her knowledge of the
household by remarking, "It's a goot mistress;--it's a goot
maister;--it's a goot, goot two lads." The elder of the two brothers
superintended, and partly wrought, his father's little