`` That ! '' I cried . The woman 's face lit up with a malignant anger . `` That is the house of Shaws ! '' she cried . `` Blood built it ; blood stopped the building of it ; blood shall bring it down . See here ! '' she cried again -- `` I spit upon the ground , and crack my thumb at it ! Black be its fall ! If ye see the laird , tell him what ye hear ; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house , byre and stable , man , guest , and master , wife , miss , or bairn -- black , black be their fall ! '' And the woman , whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song , turned with a skip , and was gone . I stood where she left me , with my hair on end . In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse ; and this one , falling so pat , like a wayside omen , to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose , took the pith out of my legs . I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws . The more I looked , the pleasanter that country-side appeared ; being all set with hawthorn bushes full of flowers ; the fields dotted with sheep ; a fine flight of rooks in the sky ; and every sign of a kind soil and climate ; and yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy . Country folk went by from the fields as I sat there on the side of the ditch , but I lacked the spirit to give them a good-e ` en . At last the sun went down , and then , right up against the yellow sky , I saw a scroll of smoke go mounting , not much thicker , as it seemed to me , than the smoke of a candle ; but still there it was , and meant a fire , and warmth , and cookery , and some living inhabitant that must have lit it ; and this comforted my heart . So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my direction . It was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place of habitation ; yet I saw no other . Presently it brought me to stone uprights , with an unroofed lodge beside them , and coats of arms upon the top .
A main entrance it was plainly meant to be , but never finished ; instead of gates of wrought iron , a pair of hurdles were tied across with a straw rope ; and as there were no park walls , nor any sign of avenue , the track that I was following passed on the XXXXX hand of the pillars , and went wandering on toward the house .
Clouston bairn cookery country-side fire habitation inhabitant laird left right