One day, however, going a little further than the Spindle, she found herself in front of a very homely thatched cottage, one of those odd little green-brown erections so extremely objectionable in a sanitary point of view, yet so satisfactory to the eye, which grow out of Scottish soil wherever improvement has not banished them, like the creation of nature. The walls were built of rough stone covered with the mosses of many years. The thatch was patched and ancient, bright bits of straw recently put in peeping out from the dark surface. The cottage consisted of a “but and a ben,” no more, that is a room on each side of the low and narrow doorway--with one small window in each, facing to the sea, and a rude bit of so-called garden, surrounded by a little rough wooden paling enclosing the door. This cottage lay in a hollow between two cliffs, and was sheltered from the wind on each side; the short rich grass, like a warm cloak thrown over the sunny nook, mantled up to the very walls; and the cottage had all the sunshine, and as little of the chill as was possible. Marjory had vaguely noticed a figure seated near the door for two or three days before she approached it, and a certain curiosity had risen in her mind--nay, a something more than curiosity, a sympathetic feeling, that the other unknown woman was like herself resting after some convulsion of nature, and seeking restoration from the calm, and the sunshine, and the salt sea. This feeling grew to a strength which surprised her, when she saw the same figure languidly seated on the same spot the second day; and on the third some natural affinity drew the two together.