in the middle; and when the next
meeting took place, he desired each head of the different Groat
families to enter at his own door and sit at the head of his own
table. This happy and ingenious plan restored good feeling and a
pleasant footing to the sensitive families, and gave to the good
Dutchman's name an interest which it will carry with it forever.

After filling my pockets with some beautiful little shells strewing
the site of the building, called "John O'Groat's buckies," I
returned to the inn. One of the gentlemen who accompanied me was
the tenant of the farm which must have been John's homestead,
containing about two hundred acres. It was mostly in oats, still
standing, with a good promise of forty bushels to the acre. He
resided at Thurso, some twenty miles distant, and found no
difficulty in carrying on the estate through a hired foreman. I
never passed a more enjoyable evening than in the little, cozy, low-
jointed parlor of this sea-side inn. Scotch cakes never had such a
relish for me nor a peat-fire more comfortable fellowship of
pleasant fancies, as I sat at the tea-table. There was a moaning of
winds down the Pentland Firth--a clattering and chattering of window
shutters, as if the unrestful spirits of the old Vikings and Norse
heroes were walking up and down the scene of their wild histories
and gibbering over their feats and fates. Spent an hour or two in
writing letters to friends in England and America, to tell them of
my arrival at this extreme goal of my walk, and a full hour in
poring over the visitors' book, in which there were names from all
countries in Christendom, and also impressions and observations in
prose, poetry, English, French, Latin, German and other languages.
Many of the comments thus recorded intimated some dissatisfaction
that John O'Groat's House was so _mythical_; that so much had to be
supplied by the imagination; that not even a stone of the foundation
remained in its place to assist fancy to erect the building into a
positive fact of history. But they all bore full and sometimes
fervid testimony to the good cheer of the inn at the hands of the
landlady. There was one record which blended loyalty to palate and
patriotism--"The Roast Beef of Old England" and "God save the
Queen"--rather amusingly. A party wrote their impressions after
this manner--"Visited John O'Groat's House; found little to see;
came back tired and hungry; walked into a couple of tender chick