ither the seed--a small
croft of barley, surrounded by a cairn-like wall made up of stones
cleared from the soil, and a patch of potato ground, neat almost as the
garden that shows in a nook its fruit-bushes and a few flowers. All the
blasts that ever blew must be unavailing against the briery rock that
shelters the hut from the airt of storms; and the smoke may rise under
its lee, unwavering on the windiest day. There is sweetness in all the
air, and the glen is noiseless, except with the uncertain murmur of the
now unswollen waterfalls. That is the croak of the raven sitting on his
cliff half-way up Ben-Oura; and hark, the last belling of the red-deer,
as the herd lies down in the mist among the last ridge of heather,
blending with the shrubless stones, rocks, and cliffs that girdle the
upper regions of the vast mountain.

Within the dimness of the hut you hear greetings in the Gaelic tongue,
in a female voice; and when the eye has by-and-by become able to endure
the smoke, it discerns the household--the veteran's ancient dame--a
young man that may be his son, or rather his grandson, but whom you soon
know to be neither, with black matted locks, the keen eye, and the light
limbs of the hunter--a young woman, his wife, suckling a child, and yet
with a girlish look, as if but one year before her silken snood had been
untied--and a lassie of ten years, who had brought home the goats, and
now sits timidly in a nook eyeing the stranger. The low growl of the
huge brindled stag-hound had been hushed by a word on your first
entrance, and the noble animal watches his master's eye, which he obeys
in his freedom throughout all the forest-chase. A napkin is taken out of
an old worm-eaten chest, and spread over a strangely-carved table, that
seems to have belonged once to a place of pride; and the hungry and
thirsty stranger scarcely knows which most to admire, the broad bannocks
of barley-meal and the huge roll of butter, or the giant bottle, whose
mouth exhales the strong savour of conquering Glenlivet. The board is
spread--why not fall to and eat? First be thanks given to the Lord God
Almighty. The blind man holds up his hand and prays in a low chanting
voice, and then breaks bread for the lips of the stranger. On such an
occasion is felt the sanctity of the meal shared by human beings brought
accidentally together--the salt is sacred--and the hearth an altar.

No great travellers are we, yet have we seen something of this habi