“I’m a man from Appin,” cried out Stewart with great promptness and cunning, “and I have a friend or two with me. I was looking for the house of Kilinchean, where a cousin of mine--a fine spinner and knitter, but thrawn in the temper--is married on the tenant, and we lost our way. We’re cold and we’re tired, and we’re hungry, and----” “Step in,” said the woman, lifting back the door. “You are many miles from Kilinchean, and I know Appin Mary very well.” But three of us entered, Stewart, M’Iver, and myself, the others on a sudden inspiration preferring not to alarm the woman by betraying the number of us, and concealing themselves in the byre that leaned against the gable of the dwelling. “God save all here!” said M’Iver as we stepped in, and the woman lit the cruisie by sticking its nose in the peat-embers. “I’m afraid we come on you at a bad time.” She turned with the cruisie in her hands and seemed to look over his head at vacancy, with large and melting eyes in a comely face. “You come,” said she, “like grief, just when we are not expecting it, and in the dead of night But you are welcome at my door.” We sat down on stools at her invitation, bathed in the yellow light of cruisie and peat. The reek of the fire rose in a faint breath among the pot-chains, and lingered among the rafters, loath, as it were, to emerge in the cold night In a cowering group beneath the blankets of a bed in a corner were four children, the bed-clothes hurriedly clutched up to their chins, their eyes staring out on the intruders. The woman put out some food before us, coarse enough in quality but plenty of it, and was searching in a press for platters when she turned to ask how many of us there were. We looked at each other a little ashamed, for it seemed as if she had guessed of our divided company and the four men in the byre. It is likely she would have been told the truth, but her next words set us on a different notion. “You’ll notice,” said she, still lifting her eyes to a point over our heads, “that I have not my sight.” “God! that’s a pity,” said M’Iver in genuine distress, with just that accent of fondling in it that a Highlander in his own tongue can use like a salve for distress. “I am not complaining of it,” said the woman; “there are worse hardships in this world.” “Mistress,” said John, “there are. I think I would willingly have been bl---- dim in the sight this morning if it could have happened.” “Ay, ay!” said the woman in a sad abstraction, standing with plates in her hand listening (I could swear) for a footstep that would never come again.