The cottar was an old man of seventy; his wife was nearly sixty.

They had reared stalwart sons and shapely daughters, now at service here and there in the valleys below--all ready to see God in nature, and recognize Him in providence.

They belong to a class now, I fear, extinct, but once, if my love prejudice not my judgment too far, the glory and strength of Scotland: their little acres are now swallowed up in the larger farms.
It was a very humble dwelling, built of turf upon a foundation of stones, and roofed with turf and straw--warm, and nearly impervious to the searching airs of the mountain-side.

One little window of a foot and a half square looked out on the universe.

At one end stood a stack of peat, half as big as the cottage itself, All around it were huge rocks, some of them peaks whose masses went down to the very central fires, others only fragments that had rolled from above.