How dreary the old house looked as we approached it through the gathering darkness! All the light appeared to come from the snow which rested wherever it could lie--on roofs and window ledges and turrets. Even on the windward walls, every little roughness sustained its own frozen patch, so that their grey was spotted all over with whiteness. Not a glimmer shone from the windows. “Nobody lives _there_, father,” I said,--“surely?” “It does not look very lively,” he answered. The house stood upon a bare knoll. There was not a tree within sight. Rugged hills arose on all sides of it. Not a sound was heard but the moan of an occasional gust of wind. There was a brook, but it lay frozen beneath yards of snow. For miles in any direction those gusts might wander without shaking door or window, or carrying with them a puff of smoke from any hearth. We were crossing the yard at the back of the house, towards the kitchen-door, for the front door had not been opened for months, when we recognized the first sign of life. That was only the low of a bullock. As we dismounted on a few feet of rough pavement which had been swept clear, an old woman came to the door, and led us into a dreary parlour without even a fire to welcome us. I learned afterwards that the laird, from being a spendthrift in his youth, had become a miser in his age, and that every household arrangement was on the narrowest scale. From wasting righteous pounds, he had come to scraping unrighteous farthings. After we had remained standing for some time, the housekeeper returned, and invited my father to go to the laird’s room. As they went, he requested her to take me to the kitchen, which, after conducting him, she did. The sight of the fire, although it was of the smallest, was most welcome. She laid a few more peats upon it, and encouraged them to a blaze, remarking, with a sidelong look: “We daren’t do this, you see, sir, if the laird was about. The honest man would call it waste.” “Is he dying?” I asked, for the sake of saying something; but she only shook her head for reply, and, going to a press at the other end of the large, vault-like kitchen, brought me some milk in a basin, and some oatcake upon a platter, saying, “It’s not my house, you see, or I would have something better to set before the minister’s son.” I was glad of any food however, and it was well for me that I ate heartily. I had got quite warm also before my father stepped into the kitchen, very solemn, and stood up with his back to the fire. The old woman set him a chair, but he neither sat down nor accepted the refreshment which she humbly offered him. “We must be going,” he objected, “for it looks stormy, and the sooner we set out the better.” “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to stop the night,” she said, “for I couldn’t make you comfortable. There’s nothing fit to offer you in the house, and there’s not a bed that’s been slept in for I don’t know how long.”