misty mountain and the darksome waste, in the whirling drifts and the overwhelming thaw, and even in the voices and sounds that are only heard by the howling cliff or the solitary dell. How can such a man fail to be impressed with the presence of an Eternal God, of an omniscient eye, and an almighty arm?"
So says the Ettrick Shepherd, and on this subject no one was better able to speak than he. It is true that he is referring to his own people, but all he has to say applies with equal force to the shepherds on the English side of the Border.
Leaving Wooler, I bent my course southwards along the base of the Cheviots, preferring bye-roads, because they brought me through more villages. The system of building cottages on the farms makes villages scarce, and one would be inclined to think there were no people in the land, so rarely does one meet even a solitary wayfarer on the road. Had I had more time, I might have studied many things beside the peasantry.
At Ilderton I came on a long row of cottages, mere plain, substantial little dwellings, each with a window and a door, cold and dreary-looking enough in the pelting rain. I found one where they kept a shop, and sold small groceries, and, entering, ventured to ask them to make me some tea. The house consisted of the one room, which served as bedroom, sitting-room, kitchen, and shop in all. Yet it was a really comfortable little place, as clean as one could wish, and the box-beds hardly looked stuffy. Pictures, not at all bad, adorned the wall; one was a large portrait of John Bunyan. On the table was a volume of Spurgeon's sermons, and a book by McCheyne. There, too, was the tall clock, without which a cottage would never seem furnished in the north.
The good woman, with just a slight tinge of coldness at first, took off a great pot of nettles she was about to boil for the pigs, and hung up the kettle. It seemed to boil in no time, and soon she made some excellent tea. Then she sat down, and began to knit away as if for her life, while her eldest daughter was busily engaged in numberless domestic duties, doing it all so pleasantly as if it were no effort. The youngest daughter it seemed had not reached the age for labour, and it being too wet to go to school was busy with a piece of fancy-work.
The mother said they were not obliged to provide a bondager,
