to die, feel like an autumn, with the golden fruits of
the earth hanging in rich clusters ready to be gathered--not like a
winter. You may feel ever so worn, but you will not feel withered. You
will die in peace, hoping for the spring--and such a spring!"

Thus talking, in the course of two hours or so we arrived at the
dwelling of the old laird.

CHAPTER XXXII

The Peat-Stack

How dreary the old house looked as we approached it through the
gathering darkness! All the light appeared to come from the snow which
rested wherever it could lie--on roofs and window ledges and turrets.
Even on the windward walls, every little roughness sustained its own
frozen patch, so that their grey was spotted all over with whiteness.
Not a glimmer shone from the windows.

"Nobody lives _there_, father," I said,--"surely?"

"It does not look very lively," he answered.

The house stood upon a bare knoll. There was not a tree within sight.
Rugged hills arose on all sides of it. Not a sound was heard but the
moan of an occasional gust of wind. There was a brook, but it lay
frozen beneath yards of snow. For miles in any direction those gusts
might wander without shaking door or window, or carrying with them a
puff of smoke from any hearth. We were crossing the yard at the back
of the house, towards the kitchen-door, for the front door had not
been opened for months, when we recognized the first sign of life.
That was only the low of a bullock. As we dismounted on a few feet of
rough pavement which had been swept clear, an old woman came to the
door, and led us into a dreary parlour without even a fire to welcome
us.

I learned afterwards that the laird, from being a spendthrift in his
youth, had become a miser in his age, and that every household
arrangement was on the narrowest scale. From wasting righteous pounds,
he had come to scraping unrighteous farthings.

After we had remained standing for some time, the housekeeper
returned, and invited my father to go to the laird's room. As they
went, he requested her to take me to the kitchen, which, after
conducting him, she did. The sight of the fire, although it was of the
smallest, was most welcome. She laid a few more peats upon it, and
encouraged them to a blaze, remarking, with a sidelong look: "We
daren't do this, you see, sir, if the laird was about. The honest man
would call it waste."

"Is he dying?" I asked, for the sake of saying something; but she only
shook her he