the hold." Click-Clack broke into a rage: "That a
dwelling for human creatures!" he said. "If I was to put my horse
intil't, poor beast! the very hoofs would rot off him in less than a
week. Are we eels or puddocks, that we are sent to live in a loch?"
Marking, however, a narrow portion of the ridge which dammed up the
waters of the neighbouring pool whence our domicile derived its supply,
I set myself to cut it across, and had soon the satisfaction of seeing
the general surface lowered fully a foot, and the floor of our future
dwelling laid bare. Click-Clack, gathering courage as he saw the waters
ebbing away, seized a shovel, and soon showed us the value of his many
years' practice in the labours of the stable; and then, despatching him
for a few cart-loads of a dry shell-sand from the shore, which I had
marked by the way as suitable for mixing with our lime, we had soon for
our tank of green water a fine white floor. "Man wants but little here
below," especially in a mason's barrack. There were two square openings
in the apartment, neither of them furnished with frame or glass; but the
one we filled up with stone, and an old unglazed frame, which, with the
assistance of a base and border of turf, I succeeded in fitting into the
other, gave at least an air of respectability to the place. Boulder
stones, capped with pieces of mossy turf, served us for seats; and we
had soon a comfortable peat fire blazing against the gable; but we were
still sadly in want of a bed: the fundamental damp of the floor was, we
saw, fast gaining on the sand; and it would be neither comfortable nor
safe to spread our dried grass and blankets over _it_. My comrade went
out to see whether the place did not furnish materials enough of any
kind to make a bedstead, and soon returned in triumph, dragging after
him a pair of harrows which he placed side by side in a snug corner
beside the fire, with of course the teeth downwards. A good Catholic,
prepared to win heaven for himself by a judicious use of sharp points,
might have preferred having them turned the other way; but my comrade
was an enlightened Protestant; and besides, like Goldsmith's sailor, he
loved to lie soft. The second piece of luck was mine. I found lying
unclaimed in the yard an old barn-door, which a recent gale had blown
from off its hinges; and by placing it above the harrows, and driving a
row of stakes around it into the floor, to keep the outer sleeper from
rolling off--for t