take any one who cares to accompany me.
But you must not come in a contemptuous mood, thinking that the poor
are but a stage removed from beasts of burden, as some cruel writers of
these days say; nor will I have you turn over with your foot the shabby
horse-hair chairs that Leeby kept so speckless, and Hendry weaved for
years to buy, and Jess so loved to look upon.

I speak of the chairs, but if we go together into the "room" they will
not be visible to you. For a long time the house has been to let.
Here, on the left of the doorway, as we enter, is the room, without a
shred of furniture in it except the boards of two closed-in beds. The
flooring is not steady, and here and there holes have been eaten into
the planks. You can scarcely stand upright beneath the decaying
ceiling. Worn boards and ragged walls, and the rusty ribs fallen from
the fireplace, are all that meet your eyes, but I see a round,
unsteady, waxcloth-covered table, with four books lying at equal
distances on it. There are six prim chairs, two of them not to be sat
upon, backed against the walls, and between the window and the
fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet. On the drawers
stands a board with coloured marbles for the game of solitaire, and I
have only to open the drawer with the loose handle to bring out the
dambrod. In the carved wood frame over the window hangs Jamie's
portrait; in the only other frame a picture of Daniel in the den of
lions, sewn by Leeby in wool. Over the chimney-piece with its shells,
in which the roar of the sea can be heard, are strung three rows of
birds' eggs. Once again we might be expecting company to tea.

The passage is narrow. There is a square hole between the rafters, and
a ladder leading up to it. You may climb and look into the attic, as
Jess liked to hear me call my tiny garret-room. I am stiffer now than
in the days when I lodged with Jess during the summer holiday I am
trying to bring back, and there is no need for me to ascend. Do not
laugh at the newspapers with which Leeby papered the garret, nor at the
yarn Hendry stuffed into the windy holes. He did it to warm the house
for Jess. But the paper must have gone to pieces and the yarn rotted
decades ago.

I have kept the kitchen for the last, as Jamie did on the dire day of
which I shall have to tell. It has a flooring of stone now, where
there used only to be hard earth, and a broken pane in the window is
indifferently stu