d lichened side. The excavation is widened
within, along the opposite walls, into two uncomfortably short beds,
very much resembling those of the cabin of a small coasting vessel. One
of the two is furnished with a protecting ledge and a pillow of stone,
hewn out of the solid mass, while the other, which is some five or six
inches shorter than its neighbor, and presents altogether more the
appearance of a place of penance than of repose, lacks both cushion and
ledge. An aperture, which seems to have been originally of a circular
form, and about two and a half feet in diameter, but which some unlucky
herd-boy, apparently in the want of better employment, has considerably
mutilated and widened, opens at the inner excavation of the extremity
to the roof, as the hatch of a vessel opens from the hold to the deck;
for it is by far too wide in proportion to the size of the apartment to
be regarded as a chimney. A gray, rudely-hewn block of sandstone, which,
though greatly too ponderous to be moved by any man of the ordinary
strength, seems to have served the purpose of a door, lies prostrate
beside the opening in front. And such is the famous Dwarfie Stone of
Hoy, as firmly fixed in our literature by the genius of Sir Walter
Scott, as in this wild valley by its ponderous weight and breadth of
base, and regarding which--for it shares in the general obscurity of the
other ancient remains of Orkney--the antiquary can do little more than
repeat, somewhat incredulously, what tradition tells him, viz., that it
was the work, many ages ago, of an ugly, malignant goblin, half-earth
half-air,--the Elfin Trolld,--a personage, it is said, that even within
the last century, used occasionally to be seen flitting about in its
neighborhood.

I was fortunate in a fine breezy day, clear and sunshiny, save where the
shadows of a few dense piled-up clouds swept dark athwart the landscape.
In the secluded recesses of the valley all was hot, heavy and still;
though now and then a fitful snatch of a breeze, the mere fragment of
some broken gust that seemed to have lost its way, tossed for a moment
the white cannach of the bogs, or raised spirally into the air, for a
few yards, the light beards of some seeding thistle, and straightway let
them down again. Suddenly, however, about noon, a shower broke thick and
heavy against the dark sides and gray scalp of the Ward Hill, and came
sweeping down the valley. I did what Norna of the Fitful Head had,
acco