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Following our path of the night before, we walked up a ruined street which I could see was only one of scores in what had once been a very great city, until we came to the archway that I have mentioned, a large one now overgrown with plants that from their yellow, sweet-scented bloom I judged to be a species of wallflower, also with a kind of houseleek or saxifrage.
For that matter I think every wild flower deserves to be noticed; but we certainly should not have time for all. I showed you several plants growing on the walls and roof, because it was interesting to see that quite beautiful flowers, such as the Wallflower and the Houseleek, could grow with very little soil.
There was no peculiar want of what is called "tenantable repair;" the windows were whole, and doubtless the roof sheltered from the rain. But the woodwork that encased the panes was decayed, and houseleek covered the tiles. Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about the place which chills the visitor, he defines not why.
But scandal is a plant that needs no root in the earth; like the houseleek, it can thrive upon air; and those who separate themselves the most entirely from the world are apt, for that very reason, to receive the larger share of its attention. The village girls looked first with pity, then with wonder, and at length with aversion, upon the gentle and unfortunate Katrine.
Thus moralizing, our traveller passed on till the dell opened, and the banks, receding from the brook, left a little green vale, exhibiting a croft, or small field, on which some corn was growing, and a cottage, whose walls were not above five feet high, and whose thatched roof, green with moisture, age, houseleek, and grass, had in some places suffered damage from the encroachment of two cows, whose appetite this appearance of verdure had diverted from their more legitimate pasture.
The slant of its roof crossed their minds dimly when they spoke of it: they could not agree as to whether it had faced north or south. It might have seemed almost fabulous, had it not been for the thicket of old lilacs purpling with bloom every spring, which had first grown before its windows, and the perennial houseleek which had clustered round the door.
The cure consists in softening the corns by repeated washing, and soaking the feet in warm or hot water; then cutting the corn very carefully when softened, with a sharp penknife without wounding the quick, and afterwards applying a leaf of houseleek, ground ivy, or purslain, dipped in vinegar.
Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings.
It hides in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its appropriate owner. The houseleek is still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf the leaves are rather like portions of the plant than mere leaves is bruised to pulp, and the juice and some of the pulp mixed with cream. They say it is efficacious.
They walked up the narrow flagged pathway, at the end of which two bushes of yew, neatly clipped, stood like sentries on either side of the doorway, where the overhanging thatch hung low, with a patch of golden houseleek glowing like a jewel upon its weather-stained and varied tones.