woman lit the
cruisie by sticking its nose in the peat-embers. "I'm afraid we come on
you at a bad time."

She turned with the cruisie in her hands and seemed to look over his
head at vacancy, with large and melting eyes in a comely face.

"You come," said she, "like grief, just when we are not expecting it,
and in the dead of night But you are welcome at my door."

We sat down on stools at her invitation, bathed in the yellow light of
cruisie and peat. The reek of the fire rose in a faint breath among the
pot-chains, and lingered among the rafters, loath, as it were, to emerge
in the cold night In a cowering group beneath the blankets of a bed in
a corner were four children, the bed-clothes hurriedly clutched up to
their chins, their eyes staring out on the intruders. The woman put out
some food before us, coarse enough in quality but plenty of it, and was
searching in a press for platters when she turned to ask how many of us
there were. We looked at each other a little ashamed, for it seemed as
if she had guessed of our divided company and the four men in the byre.
It is likely she would have been told the truth, but her next words set
us on a different notion.

"You'll notice," said she, still lifting her eyes to a point over our
heads, "that I have not my sight."

"God! that's a pity," said M'Iver in genuine distress, with just that
accent of fondling in it that a Highlander in his own tongue can use
like a salve for distress.

"I am not complaining of it," said the woman; "there are worse hardships
in this world."

"Mistress," said John, "there are. I think I would willingly have been
bl---- dim in the sight this morning if it could have happened."

"Ay, ay!" said the woman in a sad abstraction, standing with plates in
her hand listening (I could swear) for a footstep that would never come
again.

We sat and warmed ourselves and ate heartily, the heat of that homely
dwelling--the first we had sat in for days--an indulgence so rare and
precious that it seemed a thing we could never again tear ourselves away
from to encounter the unkindness of those Lorn mounts anew. The children
watched us with an alarm and curiosity no way abated, beholding in us
perhaps (for one at least was at an age to discern the difference our
tartan and general aspect presented from those of Glencoe) that we
were strangers from a great distance, maybe enemies, at least with some
rigour of warfare about our visage and attire.

Th