comfortable, and more neatly arranged than is usual in
Scotland. It had its little garden, where some fruit-trees and bushes
were mingled with kitchen herbs; a cow and six sheep fed in a paddock
hard by; the cock strutted and crowed, and summoned his family around him
before the door; a heap of brushwood and turf, neatly made up, indicated
that the winter fuel was provided; and the thin blue smoke which ascended
from the straw-bound chimney, and winded slowly out from among the green
trees, showed that the evening meal was in the act of being made ready.
To complete the little scene of rural peace and comfort, a girl of about
five years old was fetching water in a pitcher from a beautiful fountain
of the purest transparency, which bubbled up at the root of a decayed old
oak-tree about twenty yards from the end of the cottage.

The stranger reined up his horse and called to the little nymph, desiring
to know the way to Fairy Knowe. The child set down her water-pitcher,
hardly understanding what was said to her, put her fair flaxen hair apart
on her brows, and opened her round blue eyes with the wondering "What's
your wull?" which is usually a peasant's first answer, if it can be
called one, to all questions whatever.

"I wish to know the way to Fairy Knowe."

"Mammie, mammie," exclaimed the little rustic, running towards the door
of the hut, "come out and speak to the gentleman."

Her mother appeared,--a handsome young country-woman, to whose features,
originally sly and espiegle in expression, matrimony had given that
decent matronly air which peculiarly marks the peasant's wife of
Scotland. She had an infant in one arm, and with the other she smoothed
down her apron, to which hung a chubby child of two years old. The elder
girl, whom the traveller had first seen, fell back behind her mother as
soon as she appeared, and kept that station, occasionally peeping out to
look at the stranger.

"What was your pleasure, sir?" said the woman, with an air of respectful
breeding not quite common in her rank of life, but without anything
resembling forwardness.

The stranger looked at her with great earnestness for a moment, and then
replied, "I am seeking a place called Fairy Knowe, and a man called
Cuthbert Headrigg. You can probably direct me to him?"

"It's my gudeman, sir," said the young woman, with a smile of welcome.
"Will you alight, sir, and come into our puir dwelling?--Cuddie,
Cuddie,"--a white-headed rogue of