My lord had been led by the influence of Mr.Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors.

A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds.

Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect would be often black with tempest, and often white with the snows of winter.

But the house was wind and weather proof, the hearths were kept bright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might sit of an evening and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watch the fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke winding up the chimney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter.
Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours.

Every night, if he chose, he might go down to the manse and share a "brewst" of toddy with the minister--a hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and light and still active, though his knees were loosened with age, and his voice broke continually in childish trebles--and his lady wife, a heavy, comely dame, without a word to say for herself beyond good-even and good-day.
Harum-scarum, clodpole young lairds of the neighbourhood paid him the compliment of a visit.