' Our present purpose is with
the neighbourhood of the kitchen. There, too, we find some relics of
olden times; a fireplace which would legalise the Scottish invitation,
to 'come in to the fire,' inasmuch as within the chimney-arch was the
seat of honour and comfort, where a dozen cronies could sit beside the
embers, while an ox might roast in front. From that cozy neuk did the
old fiddler play in the evening, when the spinning-wheels were put
away, and the maids, generally tenants' daughters, had their dance
with the stragglers from the stables and cottages. Near the kitchen
was a much colder and more dismal place, that went by the name of 'the
Pit'--a half-subterranean recess, several steps lower than the
kitchen, into which scarcely a ray of light penetrated through the
small 'bole' that was drilled in the massive walls for a window. The
cheerless aspect of the place seemed to confirm the tradition, that it
had sometimes served of yore as a place of involuntary restraint. Its
present occupant, however, the son of a day-labourer, found no fault
with the accommodation it afforded him.
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