ten feet
square, with two beds in it, which occupied half the entire space.
But, small as it was, the good man and woman made the most of it in
the way of entertainment, getting up a tea occasionally for persons
stopping over in the village at a meal-time, also selling small
articles of grocery to the laborers. Everything was brought from a
distance, even their bread, bacon and butter. Their stock of these
fundamentals was exhausted, so that they could not give us anything
with our tea until the arrival of the train from the north, which we
all watched with common interest. In the course of half an hour it
came, and soon our cabin-landlord brought in a large basket full of
the simplest necessaries of life, which we were quite prepared to
enjoy as its best luxuries. Soon a wood fire blazed for us in the
double-bedded parlor, and the unpainted deal table was spread in the
fire-light with a repast we relished with a pleasant appreciation.

My companion was bound northward by the next train in that
direction, and was sure to find good quarters for the night; but as
there was not an inn for ten miles on the route I was to travel, and
as it was now quite night and the road mostly houseless and lonely,
I felt some anxiety about my own lodging. But on inquiry I was very
glad to find that one of the two beds in the room was unoccupied and
at my disposal. So, having accompanied my fellow-traveller to the
station and seen him off with mutual good wishes, I returned to the
cottage, and the mistress replenished the fire with a new supply of
chips and faggots, and I had two or three hours of rare enjoyment,
enhanced by some interesting books I found on a shelf by the window.
And this is a fact worthy of note and full of good meaning. You
will seldom find a cottage in Scotland, however poor and small,
without a shelf of books in it. I retired rather earlier than
usual; but before I fell asleep, the two regular lodgers, who
occupied the other bed, came in softly, and spoke in a suppressed
tone, as if reluctant to awaken me. And here I was much impressed
with another fact affiliated with the one I have mentioned--that of
praying as well as reading in the Scotch cottage. After a little
conversation just above a whisper, the elder of the two--and he not
twenty, while the other was apparently only sixteen--first read,
with full Scotch accent, one of the hard-rhymed psalms used in the
Scotch service. Then, after a short pause,