than need to be thought of in our days. For the enemies of our
ancestors were not only the cold, and the fierce wind, and the
rain, and the snow; they were men also--enemies harder to keep out
than the raging storm or the creeping frost. Hence the more
hospitable a house could be, the less must it look what it was: it
must wear its face haughty, and turn its smiles inward. The house
of Glenwarlock, as it was also sometimes called, consisted of three
massive, narrow, tall blocks of building, which showed little
connection with each other beyond juxtaposition, two of them
standing end to end, with but a few feet of space between, and the
third at right angles to the two. In the two which stood end to
end, and were originally the principal parts, hardly any windows
were to be seen on the side that looked out into the valley; while
in the third, which, though looking much of the same age, was of
later build, were more windows, but none in the lowest story.
Narrow as were these buildings, and four stories high, they had a
solid, ponderous look, suggesting a thickness of the walls such as
to leave little of a hollow within for the indwellers--like great
marine shells for a small mollusk. On the other side was a kind of
a court, completed by the stables and cowhouses, and towards this
court were most of the windows--many of them for size more like
those in the cottages around, than suggestive of a house built by
the lords of the soil. The court was now merely that of a farmyard.

There must have been at one time outer defences to the castle, but
they were no longer to be distinguished by the inexperienced eye;
and indeed the; windowless walls of the house itself seemed strong
enough to repel any attack without artillery--except indeed the
assailants had got into the court. There were however some signs of
the windows there having been enlarged if not increased at a later