the ridge
from gable to gable; and in stormy evenings I have paused at every ruder
blast, in the expectation of hearing the rafters crack and give way over
my head. The distiller had introduced upon his farm, on a small scale,
what has since been extensively known as the bothy system; and this
hovel was the bothy. There were, as I have said, but three farm-servants
who lived in it at the time--young, unmarried lads, extremely ignorant,
and of gay, reckless dispositions, whose care for their master's
interests might be read in the germinating sheaves that lay upon his
fields, and who usually spoke of him, when out of his hearing, as "the
old sinner." He too evidently cared nothing for them; and they detested
him, and regarded the ruin which had overtaken him, and which their own
recklessness and indifference to his welfare must have at least assisted
to secure, with open satisfaction. "It was ae comfort, anyhow," they
said, "that the blastit old sinner, after a' his near-goingness wi'
them, was now but a dyvour bankrupt." Bad enough certainly; and yet
natural enough, and, in a sense, proper enough too. The Christian divine
would have urged these men to return their master good for evil.
Cobbett, on the contrary, would have advised them to go out at nights a
rick-burning. The better advice will to a certainty not be taken by
ninety-nine out of every hundred of our bothy-men; for it is one of the
grand evils of the system, that it removes its victims beyond the
ennobling influences of religion; and, on the other hand, at least this
much may be said for the worse counsel, that the system costs the
country every year the price of a great many corn-ricks.

The three lads lived chiefly on brose, as the viand at all edible into
which their oatmeal could be most readily converted; and never baked or
made for themselves a dish of porridge or gruel, apparently to avoid
trouble, and that they might be as little as possible in the hated
bothy. I always lost sight of them in the evening; but towards midnight
their talk frequently awoke me as they were going to bed; and I heard
them tell of incidents that had befallen them at the neighbouring
farm-houses, or refer to blackguard bits of scandal which they had
picked up. Sometimes a fourth voice mingled in the dialogue. It was that
of a reckless poacher, who used to come in, always long after
nightfall, and fling himself down on a lair of straw in a corner of the
bothy; and usually ere