Our meal despatched, and neither waiter nor hostess appearing, we had leisure to survey the apartment. The centre was supported on what was literally a roof _tree_, for a venerable beech, that had, perhaps, been the original attraction to the site, still upheld the simple framework of the roof, raised aloft on its double-twisted stem, selected, doubtless, for its promise of double strength. In one corner of the room stood a solid oaken chest, the receptacle of the meal that supplied the family with food; opposite was a bed, or rather shake-down, for it was on the floor, but looked very clean and comfortable; on the third side the peat was giving out its red heat from a spacious hearth, and indeed induced such a feeling of suffocation, that we would fain have opened the window for a little fresh air from the mountains. The massive framework, however, was not made to open; it seemed calculated rather to exclude light as well as air, for the proportion of glass was small indeed; so in despair I went to the side door, and, in opening it, nearly tumbled through, for the earth (there was no flooring) had sunk so much at the threshold as to have left a sort of trench. I recovered myself and stepped over, and there were the four barefooted urchins with their curly heads and their rosy cheeks, the very picture of health and glee, standing round a three-legged stool on which their mother had set a large bowl of smoking potatoes and milk. They were sipping and eating, and just as I entered the room, the elder boy having fished up a particularly attractive, flowery bit of potato between his finger and thumb, ran to the baby, a fine child of some ten or eleven months old, who was sitting on its mother’s knee, and began to cram its tiny mouth with the delicious morsel which broke and crumbled and fell into the infant’s lap; the petted baby smiled and laughed, and helped to pick up the crumbs, and put them, not into her own mouth, but her mother’s. “That’s a braw bairn,” exclaimed the mother, “a right Highland lassie, aye to gie the bit and sup afore you tak’ it yoursel;” and the child, at the sound of its mother’s voice, turned to her, and forgot the potato and nestled in her bosom, and she bent her head over the bonnie wee thing, and gave it a long fond kiss, as though it had been her first-born. She was seated on a low oaken bench, such as in England is called a settle, and a high screen behind her prevented her seeing our entrance.