London to John O Groat's. 379 



good wishes, I returned to the cottage, and the mistress 

 replenished the fire with a new supply of chips and 

 faggots, and I had two or three hours of rare enjoy- 

 ment, enhanced by some interesting books I found on 

 a shelf by the window. And this is a fact worthy of 

 note and full of good meaning. You will seldom find 

 a cottage in Scotland, however poor and small, without 

 a shelf of books in it. I retired rather earlier than 

 iisual ; but before I fell asleep, the two regular lodgers, 

 who occupied the other bed, came in softly, and spoke 

 in a suppressed tone, as if reluctant to awaken me. 

 And here I was much impressed with another fact 

 affiliated with the one I have mentioned that of 

 praying as well as reading in the Scotch cottage. 

 After a little conversation just above a whisper, the 

 elder of the two and he not twenty, while the other 

 was apparently only sixteen first read, with full Scotch 

 accent, one of the hard-rhymed psalms used in the 

 Scotch service. Then, after a short pause, he read with 

 a low, solemn voice a chapter in the Bible. A few 

 minutes of silence succeeded, as if a wordless prayer 

 was going upward upon the still wings of thought, 

 which made no audible beating in their flight. It was 

 very impressive ; an incident that I shall ever hold 

 among the most interesting of all I met with on my 

 walk. They were not brothers evidently, but most 



