" "Then they must go," Osborn rejoined, trying to hide his disappointment, since he had spent some money on the steadings in the hope of raising the rent.

It was a secure hiding-place for such a fugitive as a Saxon king because he could not be pursued by an army; he himself with a few followers could move from steading to steading and enjoy a certain amount of state, but a pursuing army would have perished.

The place was so smiling and homelike under the westering sun that one looked to see a trim steading with the smoke of hearth fires ascending, and to hear the cheerful sounds of labour and of children's voices.

The saide houses within are full of earth, and walled round about with brickes and dirt in steade of lime, and without forme, from the top to the foote they make a couering for them with Sugar canes, and plaister it with lime all ouer, for otherwise they would bee spoyled, by the great aboundance of raine that falleth in those Countreys.

But when my father, after we had walked for about an hour, raised his stick, and, pointing to a neat farm-steading on the slope of a hill, and on the skirt of a dense mountain forest that rose high behind it, said, "There's the house, Davie," I thought I should have sunk on the ground.

From such a start in the kind of husbandry we are now discussing, the next step was to provide masonry enclosures near the steading to confine game, and these served as well for shelter for the bee-stand, for originally the bees were wont to make their hives under the eaves of the farm house itself.

So when this one came to the steading at West Inch I was not best pleased to see her.