Tom, who was in prison, was the only stanch friend to the father, who consequently at this time was in a more than usually depressed condition.
Christmas-day would fall on a Tuesday, and on the Monday before it Jerry Brownbie, the eldest of those now at home, was sitting, with a pipe in his mouth, on a broken-down stool on the broken-down veranda of the house, and the old man was seated on a stuffy, worn-out sofa with three legs, which was propped against the wall of the house, and had not been moved for years.

Old Brownbie was a man of gigantic frame, and had possessed immense personal power--a man, too, of will and energy; but he was now worn out and dropsical, and could not move beyond the confines of the home station.

The veranda was attached to a big room which ran nearly the whole length of the house, and which was now used for all purposes.

There was an exterior kitchen, in which certain processes were carried on--such as salting stolen mutton and boiling huge masses of meat, when such work was needed.
But the cookery was generally done in the big room.

And here also two or three of the sons slept on beds made upon stretchers along the wall.