IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY. 69 



but makes the communication between the two as 

 easy and open as possible. At least this is the case 

 with most of the older houses. Hence village houses 

 and cottages in Britain are far less private and se- 

 cluded than ours, and country houses far less pub- 

 lic. The only feature of Ecclefechan, besides the 

 church, that distinguishes it from the humblest peas- 

 ant village of an hundred years ago, is the large, fine 

 stone structure used for the public school. It con- 

 fers a sort of distinction upon the place, as if it were 

 in some way connected with the memory of its fa- 

 mous son. I think I was informed that he had some 

 hand in founding it. The building in which he first 

 attended school is a low, humble dwelling, that now 

 stands behind the church, and forms part of the 

 boundary between the cemetery and the Annan road. 

 From our window I used to watch the laborers on 

 their way to their work, the children going to school, 

 or to the pump for water, and night and morning 

 the women bringing in their cows from the pasture 

 to be milked. In the long June gloaming the evening 

 milking was not done till about nine o'clock. On 

 two occasions, the first in a brisk rain, a bedraggled, 

 forlorn, deeply-hooded, youngish woman, came slowly 

 through the street, pausing here and there, and sing- 

 ing in wild, melancholy, and not un pi easing strains. 

 Her voice had a strange piercing plaintiveness and 

 wildness. Now and then some passer-by would toss 

 a penny at her feet. The pretty Edinburgh lass, her 

 hair redder than Scotch gold, that waited upon us at 



