We left the pub in Yarnung at nine, and arrived at our destination somewhere about two o’clock in the afternoon.

I had waxed quite cheerful, and began to look upon the situation in a sensible light.  It was necessary that I should stand up to the guns of life at one time or another, and why not now?  M’Swat’s might not be so bad after all.  Even if they were dirty, they would surely be willing to improve if I exercised tact in introducing a few measures.  I was not afraid of work, and would do many things.  But all these ideas were knocked on the head, like a dairyman’s surplus calves, when on entering Barney’s Gap we descended a rough road to the house, which was built in a narrow gully between two steep stony hills, which, destitute of grass, rose like grim walls of rock, imparting a desolate and prison-like aspect.

Six dogs, two pet lambs, two or three pigs, about twenty fowls, eight children which seemed a dozen, and Mrs M’Swat bundled out through the back door at our approach.  Those children, not through poverty—­M’Swat made a boast of his substantial banking account—­but on account of ignorance and slatternliness, were the dirtiest urchins I have ever seen, and were so ragged that those parts of them which should have been covered were exposed to view.  The majority of them had red hair and wide hanging-open mouths.  Mrs M’Swat was a great, fat, ignorant, pleasant-looking woman, shockingly dirty and untidy.  Her tremendous, flabby, stockingless ankles bulged over her unlaced hobnailed boots; her dress was torn and unbuttoned at the throat, displaying one of the dirtiest necks I have seen.  It did not seem to worry her that the infant she hold under her arm like a roll of cloth howled killingly, while the other little ones clung to her skirts, attempting to hide their heads in its folds like so many emus.  She greeted me with a smacking kiss, consigned the baby to the charge of the eldest child, a big girl of fourteen, and seizing upon my trunks as though they were feather-weight, with heavy clodhopping step disappeared into the house with them.  Returning, she invited me to enter, and following in her wake, I was followed by the children through the dirtiest passage into the dirtiest room, to sit upon the dirtiest chair, to gaze upon the other dirtiest furniture of which I have ever heard.  One wild horrified glance at the dirt, squalor, and total benightedness that met me on every side, and I trembled in every limb with suppressed emotion and the frantic longing to get back to Caddagat which possessed me.  One instant showed me that I could never, never live here.

“Have ye had yer dinner?” my future mistress inquired in a rough uncultivated voice.  I replied in the negative.

“Sure, ye’ll be dyin’ of hunger; but I’ll have it in a twinklin’.”