y--ye are clean aff the road, as I may say. But
if your leddyship will just hae patience, and wait till we are by the
place and out of the glen, I'll tell ye all about it. There is no much
luck in speaking of such things in the place they chanced in."

I was obliged to suspend my curiosity, observing, that if I persisted
in twisting the discourse one way while Donald was twining it another, I
should make his objection, like a hempen cord, just so much the tougher.
At length the promised turn of the road brought us within fifty paces of
the tree which I desired to admire, and I now saw to my surprise, that
there was a human habitation among the cliffs which surrounded it. It
was a hut of the least dimensions, and most miserable description that
I ever saw even in the Highlands. The walls of sod, or DIVOT, as the
Scotch call it, were not four feet high; the roof was of turf, repaired
with reeds and sedges; the chimney was composed of clay, bound round by
straw ropes; and the whole walls, roof, and chimney, were alike covered
with the vegetation of house-leek, rye-grass, and moss common to decayed
cottages formed of such materials. There was not the slightest vestige
of a kale-yard, the usual accompaniment of the very worst huts; and of
living things we saw nothing, save a kid which was browsing on the roof
of the hut, and a goat, its mother, at some distance, feeding betwixt
the oak and the river Awe.

"What man," I could not help exclaiming, "can have committed sin deep
enough to deserve such a miserable dwelling!"

"Sin enough," said Donald MacLeish, with a half-suppressed groan; "and
God he knoweth, misery enough too. And it is no man's dwelling neither,
but a woman's."

"A woman's!" I repeated, "and in so lonely a place! What sort of a woman
can she be?"

"Come this way, my leddy, and you may judge that for yourself," said
Donald. And by advancing a few steps, and making a sharp turn to the
left, we gained a sight of the side of the great broad-breasted oak, in
the direction opposed to that in which we had hitherto seen it.

"If she keeps her old wont, she will be there at this hour of the day,"
said Donald; but immediately became silent, and pointed with his finger,
as one afraid of being overheard. I looked, and beheld, not without some
sense of awe, a female form seated by the stem of the oak, with her head
drooping, her hands clasped, and a dark-coloured mantle drawn over her
head, exactly as Judah is repres