d by the kitchen fire, sent me "ben the
hoose" into the guest-room. This guest-room at Dunure was painted in
quite aesthetic fashion. There are rooms in the same taste not a hundred
miles from London, where persons of an extreme sensibility meet together
without embarrassment. It was all in a fine dull bottle-green and black;
a grave harmonious piece of colouring, with nothing, so far as coarser
folk can judge, to hurt the better feelings of the most exquisite
purist. A cherry-red half window-blind kept up an imaginary warmth in
the cold room, and threw quite a glow on the floor. Twelve cockle-shells
and a halfpenny china figure were ranged solemnly along the
mantel-shelf. Even the spittoon was an original note, and instead of
sawdust contained sea-shells. And as for the hearthrug, it would merit
an article to itself, and a coloured diagram to help the text. It was
patchwork, but the patchwork of the poor; no glowing shreds of old
brocade and Chinese silk, shaken together in the kaleidoscope of some
tasteful housewife's fancy; but a work of art in its own way, and
plainly a labour of love. The patches came exclusively from people's
raiment. There was no colour more brilliant than a heather mixture; "My
Johnnie's grey breeks," well polished over the oar on the boat's
thwart, entered largely into its composition. And the spoils of an old
black cloth coat, that had been many a Sunday to church, added something
(save the mark!) of preciousness to the material.

While I was at luncheon four carters came in--long-limbed, muscular
Ayrshire Scots, with lean, intelligent faces. Four quarts of stout were
ordered; they kept filling the tumbler with the other hand as they
drank; and in less time than it takes me to write these words the four
quarts were finished--another round was proposed, discussed, and
negatived--and they were creaking out of the village with their carts.

The ruins drew you towards them. You never saw any place more desolate
from a distance, nor one that less belied its promise near at hand. Some
crows and gulls flew away croaking as I scrambled in. The snow had
drifted into the vaults. The clachan dabbled with snow, the white hills,
the black sky, the sea marked in the coves with faint circular wrinkles,
the whole world, as it looked from a loop-hole in Dunure, was cold,
wretched, and out-at-elbows. If you had been a wicked baron and
compelled to stay there all the afternoon, you would have had a rare fit
of