pointed out,
but it has been enlarged and improved since those days. At that time,
like all the farm servants' dwellings in the district, it consisted
of a single room with an earthen floor, an open unlined roof of red
tiles, and rafters running across and resting on the wall at each
side. There was a fireplace at one end and a window, and then a door
at right angles to the fireplace. When the furniture came to be put
in, the two box-beds with their sliding panels were set up facing the
fireplace; they touched the back wall at one end, and left a small
space free opposite to the door at the other. The beds came almost,
if not quite, up to the level of the rafters, and screened off behind
them perhaps a third of the entire space, which was used as a lumber
closet or store. Above the rafters, well furnished with _cleeks_ for
the family stock of hams, there was spread, in lieu of a ceiling, a
large sheet of canvas or coarse unbleached cotton. There was a table
under the window, a _dresser_ with racks for plates, etc., set up
against the opposite wall, and an eight-day clock between the window
and the fireplace. "Fixtures" were in such houses practically
non-existent; the grate, which consisted merely of two or three bars
or _ribs_, the iron _swey_ from which hung the large pot with its
rudimentary feet, and, in some cases, even the window, were the
property of the immigrants, and were carried about by them from
farm to farm in their successive flirtings.

When at Whiterigg, the children attended school at Ayton, and here
young John learned his letters and made considerable progress in
reading. After two years, the death of the Whiterigg farmer made
another change necessary, and the family returned to the Dunglass
estate and settled at Aikieside, a forester's cottage quite near
to their former home at Oldcambus Mains, and within easy reach of
Oldcambus School. Aikieside is in the Pease Dean, a magnificent wooded
glen, crossed a little lower down by a famous bridge which carries
the old post road from Edinburgh to Berwick over the Pease Burn at
a height of nearly one hundred and thirty feet. A still older road
crosses the stream close to its mouth, less than a mile below the
bridge. The descent here is very steep on both sides, but it seems
to have been even steeper in former times than it is now. This point
in the old road is "the strait Pass at Copperspath," where Oliver
Cromwell before the battle of Dunbar found the way