HIS COTTAGE. 5 



chained to its place if desired ; but, as a matter of fact, a 

 chain was unnecessary, for no man could possibly drag this 

 torturing clog along. 



Another outhouse attached to the cottage contains a 

 copper for preparing the food for both quadrupeds and 

 birds. Some poultry run about the mead, and perhaps 

 with them are feeding the fancy foreign ducks which in 

 summer swim in the lake before the hall. 



The cottage is thatched and oddly gabled built before 

 ' improvements ' came into fashion yet cosy ; with walls 

 three feet thick, which keep out the cold of winter and the 

 heat of summer. This is not solid masonry ; there are 

 two shells, as it were, filled up between with rubble and 

 mortar rammed down hard. 



Inside the door the floor of brick is a step below the 

 level of the ground. Sometimes a peculiar but not alto- 

 gether unpleasant odour fills the low-pitched sitting-room 

 it is emitted by the roots burning upon the fire, hissing 

 as the sap exudes and boils in the fierce heat. When the 

 annual fall of timber takes place the butts of the trees are 

 often left in the earth, to be afterwards grubbed and split 

 for firewood, which goes to the great house or is sold. 

 There still remain the roots, which are cut into useful 

 lengths and divided among the upper employes. From 

 elm and oak and ash, and the crude turpentine of the fir, 

 this aromatic odour, the scent of the earth in which they 

 grew, is exhaled as they burn. 



