It was a hut of the least dimensions, and most miserable description that I ever saw even in the Highlands.

The walls of sod, or DIVOT, as the Scotch call it, were not four feet high; the roof was of turf, repaired with reeds and sedges; the chimney was composed of clay, bound round by straw ropes; and the whole walls, roof, and chimney, were alike covered with the vegetation of house-leek, rye-grass, and moss common to decayed cottages formed of such materials.

There was not the slightest vestige of a kale-yard, the usual accompaniment of the very worst huts; and of living things we saw nothing, save a kid which was browsing on the roof of the hut, and a goat, its mother, at some distance, feeding betwixt the oak and the river Awe.
"What man," I could not help exclaiming, "can have committed sin deep enough to deserve such a miserable dwelling!" "Sin enough," said Donald MacLeish, with a half-suppressed groan; "and God he knoweth, misery enough too.

And it is no man's dwelling neither, but a woman's." "A woman's!" I repeated, "and in so lonely a place! What sort of a woman can she be ?" "Come this way, my leddy, and you may judge that for yourself," said Donald.

And by advancing a few steps, and making a sharp turn to the left, we gained a sight of the side of the great broad-breasted oak, in the direction opposed to that in which we had hitherto seen it.
"If she keeps her old wont, she will be there at this hour of the day," said Donald; but immediately became silent, and pointed with his finger, as one afraid of being overheard.