water was boiled in an iron pan, and dealt
out to us in a jug, a proof that she does not often drink tea, though she
said she had always tea and sugar in the house. She and the rest of the
family breakfasted on curds and whey, as taken out of the pot in which
she was making cheese; she insisted upon my taking some also; and her
husband joined in with the old story, that it was 'varra halesome.' I
thought it exceedingly good, and said to myself that they lived nicely
with their cow: she was meat, drink, and company. Before breakfast the
housewife was milking behind the chimney, and I thought I had seldom
heard a sweeter fire-side sound; in an evening, sitting over a sleepy,
low-burnt fire, it would lull one like the purring of a cat.

When we departed, the good woman shook me cordially by the hand, saying
she hoped that if ever we came into Scotland again, we would come and see
her. The lake was calm, but it rained so heavily that we could see
little. Landed at about ten o'clock, almost wet to the skin, and, with
no prospect but of streaming rains, faced the mountain-road to Loch
Lomond. We recognised the same objects passed before,--the tarn, the
potato-bed, and the cottages with their burnies, which were no longer, as
one might say, household streams, but made us only think of the mountains
and rocks they came from. Indeed, it is not easy to imagine how
different everything appeared; the mountains with mists and torrents
alive and always changing: but the low grounds where the inhabitants had
been at work the day before were melancholy, with here and there a few
haycocks and hay scattered about.

Wet as we were, William and I turned out of our path to the Garrison
house. A few rooms of it seemed to be inhabited by some wretchedly poor
families, and it had all the desolation of a large decayed mansion in the
suburbs of a town, abandoned of its proper inhabitants, and become the
abode of paupers. In spite of its outside bravery, it was but a poor
protection against 'the sword of winter, keen and cold.' We looked at
the building through the arch of a broken gateway of the courtyard, in
the middle of which it stands. Upon that stormy day it appeared more
than desolate; there was something about it even frightful.

When beginning to descend the hill towards Loch Lomond, we overtook two
girls, who told us we could not cross the ferry till evening, for the
boat was gone with a number of people to church. One of t