orsemen, travellers,
all of whom she had to provide with supper, and she was, as she told us,
the only woman there.

Never did I see such a miserable, such a wretched place,--long rooms with
ranges of beds, no other furniture except benches, or perhaps one or two
crazy chairs, the floors far dirtier than an ordinary house could be if
it were never washed,--as dirty as a house after a sale on a rainy day,
and the rooms being large, and the walls naked, they looked as if more
than half the goods had been sold out. We sate shivering in one of the
large rooms for three quarters of an hour before the woman could find
time to speak to us again; she then promised a fire in another room,
after two travellers, who were going a stage further, had finished their
whisky, and said we should have supper as soon as possible. She had no
eggs, no milk, no potatoes, no loaf-bread, or we should have preferred
tea. With length of time the fire was kindled, and, after another hour's
waiting, supper came,--a shoulder of mutton so hard that it was
impossible to chew the little flesh that might be scraped off the bones,
and some sorry soup made of barley and water, for it had no other taste.

After supper, the woman, having first asked if we slept on blankets,
brought in two pair of sheets, which she begged that I would air by the
fire, for they would be dirtied below-stairs. I was very willing, but
behold! the sheets were so wet, that it would have been at least a
two-hours' job before a far better fire than could be mustered at King's
House,--for, that nothing might be wanting to make it a place of complete
starvation, the peats were not dry, and if they had not been helped out
by decayed wood dug out of the earth along with them, we should have had
no fire at all. The woman was civil, in her fierce, wild way. She and
the house, upon that desolate and extensive Wild, and everything we saw,
made us think of one of those places of rendezvous which we read of in
novels--Ferdinand Count Fathom, or Gil Blas,--where there is one woman to
receive the booty, and prepare the supper at night. She told us that she
was only a servant, but that she had now lived there five years, and
that, when but a 'young lassie,' she had lived there also. We asked her
if she had always served the same master, 'Nay, nay, many masters, for
they were always changing.' I verily believe that the woman was attached
to the place like a cat to the empty house when th