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Updated: May 21, 2025
Two of the beds were near the peat-fires, which were still burning, but the others were further back in the cave where they were better sheltered. "On the bed nearest the entrance lay a man and his wife, both absolutely naked, and two little children in the same state. On the next bed lay another couple, an infant, and one or two elder children.
Cabins of reeds plastered with mud, houses of wattled stakes, chimneyless peat-fires from which there was scarcely an escape for the smoke, dens of physical and moral pollution swarming with vermin, wisps of straw twisted round the limbs to keep off the cold, the ague-stricken peasant, with no help except shrine-cure! How was it possible that the population could increase?
It fell black and sudden on the country, turning the mud floors of the poorer dwellings into iron that rang below the heel, though the peat-fires burned by day and night, and Loch Finne, lying flat as a girdle from shore to shore, crisped and curdled into ice on the surface in the space of an afternoon.
While Alick Carnegy was absent, enjoying his forbidden pleasure in Brattlesby Woods with Jerry Blunt, the bird-trainer, and Ned Dempster, strange things were happening in the quiet little bay at home things that will be talked of for years to come in the long winter nights, when the fisher-wives sit mending their husband's nets round the peat-fires, and the children crowd close to listen with all their ears to the story.
The thick smoke of smouldering peat-fires came from the low chimneys, and drifted across the ruins with the odors of drying fish. "I've just seen a sort of ground-plan of the castle," said Miss Elsie cheerfully. "It never had a room in it as big as our bedroom in the hotel, and there weren't windows enough to go round.
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