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So may some cadet of Royal Écossais or the Albany Regiment, as he mounted guard about French citadels, so may some officer marching his company of the Scots-Dutch among the polders, have felt the soft rains of the Hebrides upon his brow, or started in the ranks at the remembered aroma of peat-smoke. And the rivers of home are dear in particular to all men.
Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and pleasant, nor was there mingled with it any disagreeable smell of cooking. Outside were no lamps; the road was unlighted save by the few rays that here and there crept from a window, casting a doubtful glimmer on the mire.
In another place he devotes a page to a description of a dog whom he saw running round after its tail; in still another he remarks, in a paragraph by itself "The aromatic odor of peat-smoke, in the sunny autumnal air is very pleasant."
When the old house had to make room for the new, the staves of the last of its half-pipes of claret, one of which used always to stand on tap amidst the peat-smoke, yielded its final ministration to humanity by serving to cook a few meals for mason and carpenter.
He entered the cottage with these verses in his memory. Poor old Janet, bent double with age and bleared with peat-smoke, was tottering about the hut with a birch broom, muttering to herself as she endeavoured to make her hearth and floor a little clean for the reception of her expected guests.
'But it may be of consequence to the state, sir, replied an old farmer, smelling strongly of whisky and peat-smoke; 'and I doubt we maun delay your journey till you have seen the Laird. 'You certainly, said Waverley, haughtily, 'will find it both difficult and dangerous to detain me, unless you can produce some proper authority.
The chimney went up through the rock, and had been the most difficult part of their undertaking. They had to work it much wider than was necessary for the smoke, and then to reduce its capacity with stone and lime. Now and then it smoked, but peat-smoke is sweet.
All the while I was eating, and after that when I was drinking the punch, I could scarce come to believe in my good fortune; and the house, though it was thick with the peat-smoke and as full of holes as a colander, seemed like a palace.
The peat-smoke still lingered in the air: she could not have wished anything to be better. Then she went off to look after the luncheon, and Mairi was permitted to go down and explore the mysteries of the kitchen.
"I wonder, Miss Mackenzie," he said at length, when they got outside, his eyes dazed with the light and smarting with the peat-smoke "I wonder you can trouble yourself with such little matters that those people should find out for themselves." The girl looked up with some surprise: "That is the work I have to do. My papa cannot do everything in the island."
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