My host seemed to be struggling with himself to tell me something, and as I looked at him, tall, strong, and upright, his face all mottled by the weather, his homespun coat, patched on the shoulders with buckskin that once had been white, but now was fawn-coloured with wet and from the chafing of his gun, I felt the parturition of his speech would probably cost him a shrewd throe. So I said nothing, and he, after having filled his pipe, ramming the tobacco down with an old silver Indian seal, made as he told me in Kurachi, and brought home by a great-uncle fifty years ago, slowly began to speak, not looking at me, but as it were delivering his thoughts aloud, almost unconsciously, looking now and then at me as if he felt, rather than knew, that I was there. As he spoke, the tall, stuffed hen-harrier; the little Neapolitan shrine in tortoiseshell and coral, set thick with saints; the flying dragons from Ceylon, spread out like butterflies in a glazed case; the “poor’s-box” on the shelf above the books with its four silver sides adorned with texts; the rows of blue books, and of Scott’s Novels (the Roxburgh edition), together with the scent exuding from the Kingwood cabinet; the sprays of white Scotch rose, outlined against the window blinds; and the sporting prints and family tree, all neatly framed in oak, created the impression of being in a world remote, besquired and cut off from the century in which we live by more than fifty years. Upon the rug before the fire the sleeping spaniel whined uneasily, as if, though sleeping, it still scented game, and all the time the storm roared in the trees and whistled down the passages of the lone country house. One saw in fancy, deep in the recesses of the woods, the roe stand sheltering, and the capercailzie sitting on the branches of the firs, wet and dejected, like chickens on a roost, and little birds sent fluttering along, battling for life against the storm. Upon such nights, in districts such as that in which the gaunt old house was situated, there is a feeling of compassion for the wild things in the woods that, stealing over one, bridges the gulf between them and ourselves in a mysterious way. Their lot and sufferings, joys, loves, and the epitome of their brief lives, come home to us with something irresistible, making us feel that our superiority is an unreal thing, and that in essentials we are one.