he wall served to secure the position of the inner
one--we succeeded in constructing, by our joint efforts, a luxurious
bed. There was but one serious drawback on its comforts: the roof
overhead was bad, and there was an obstinate drop, that used, during
every shower which fell in the season of sleep, to make a dead set at
my face, and try me at times with the water torture of the old story,
mayhap half a dozen times in the course of a single night.

Our barrack fairly fitted up, I set out with my comrade, whose knowledge
of Gaelic enabled him to act as my interpreter, to a neighbouring group
of cottages, to secure a labourer for the work of the morrow. The
evening was now beginning to darken; but there was still light enough to
show me that the little fields I passed through on my way resembled very
much those of Liliput, as described by Gulliver. They were, however,
though equally small, greatly more irregular, and had peculiarities,
too, altogether their own. The land had originally been stony; and as it
showed, according to the Highland phrase, its "bare bones through its
skin"--large bosses of the rock beneath coming here and there to the
surface--the Highlanders had gathered the stones in great pyramidal
heaps on the bare bosses; and so very numerous were these in some of the
fields, that they looked as if some malignant sorcerer had, in the time
of harvest, converted all their shocks into stone. On approaching the
cottage of our future labourer, I was attracted by a door of very
peculiar construction that lay against the wall. It had been brought
from the ancient pine forest on the western bank of Loch Maree, and was
formed of the roots of trees so curiously interlaced by nature, that
when cut out of the soil, which it had covered over like a piece of
network, it remained firmly together, and now formed a door which the
mere imitator of the rustic might in vain attempt to rival. We entered
the cottage, and plunging downwards two feet or so, found ourselves upon
the dunghill of the establishment, which in this part of the country
usually occupied at the time an ante-chamber which corresponded to that
occupied by the cattle a few years earlier, in the midland districts of
Sutherland. Groping in this foul outer chamber through a stifling
atmosphere of smoke, we came to an inner door raised to the level of
the soil outside, through which a red umbry gleam escaped into the
darkness; and, climbing into the inner apartme