For a full fortnight he allowed neither to enter the little chamber. As often as they called him, he answered cheerfully, but never showed himself except when Phemy brought him food, which, at his urgent request, was only once in the twenty-four hours-- after night-fall, the last thing before she went to bed; then he would slide down the ladder, take what she had brought him, and hurry up again. Phemy was perplexed, and at last a good deal distressed, for he had always been glad of her company before. At length, one day, hearing her voice in the shop, and having peeped through a hole in the floor to see that no stranger was present, he invited her to go up, and lifted the trap-door. “Come, come,” he said hurriedly, when her head appeared and came no farther. He stood holding the trap-door, eager to close it again as soon as she should step clear of it, and surprise was retarding her ascent. Before hearing his mind, the carpenter had already made for him, by way of bedstead, a simple frame of wood, crossed with laths in the form of lattice-work: this the laird had taken and set up on its side, opposite the window, about two feet from it, so that, with abundant passage for air, it served as a screen. Fixing it firmly to the floor, he had placed on the top of it a large pot of the favourite cottage-plant there called _Humility_, and trained its long pendent runners over it. On the floor between it and the window, he had ranged a row of flower pots--one of them with an ivy-plant, which also he had begun to train against the trellis; and already the humility and the ivy had begun to intermingle. At one side of the room, where the sloping roof met the floor, was his bed of fresh pine-shavings, amongst which, their resinous half-aromatic odour apparently not sweet enough to content him, he had scattered a quantity of dried rose-leaves. A thick tartan plaid, for sole covering, lay upon the heap. “I wad hae likit hay better,” he said, pointing to this lair rather than couch, “but it’s some ill to get, an’ the spales they’re at han’, an’ they smell unco clean.” At the opposite side of the room lay a corresponding heap, differing not a little, however, in appearance and suggestion. As far as visible form and material could make it one, it was a grave --rather a short one, but abundantly long for the laird. It was in reality a heap of mould, about a foot and a half high, covered with the most delicate grass, and bespangled with daisies. “Laird!” said Phemy, half reproachfully, as she stood gazing at the marvel, “ye hae been oot at nicht!” “Aye--a’ nicht whiles, whan naebody was aboot ’cep’ the win’” --he pronounced the word with a long-drawn imitative sough--“an’ the cloods an’ the splash o’ the watter.”