From straps fixed to the rafters hung a gun, a whip, and a horn.  Two square windows, that looked out over the narrow causeway, were covered by curtains of red cloth.  An oak bench stood in each window recess.  The walls throughout were panelled in oak, which was carved here and there in curious archaic devices.  The panelling had for the most part grown black with age; the rosier spots, that were polished to the smoothness and brightness of glass, denoted the positions of cupboards.  Strong settles and broad chairs stood in irregular places about the floor, which was of the bare earth, grown hard as stone, and now sanded.  The chimney nook spanned the width of one end of the room.  It was an open ingle with seats in the wall at each end, and the fire on the ground between them.  A goat’s head and the horns of an ox were the only ornaments of the chimney-breast, which was white-washed.

On this night of 1660 the wind was loud and wild without.  The snowstorm that had hung over the head of Castenand in the morning had come down the valley as the day wore on.  The heavy sleet rattled at the windows.  In its fiercer gusts it drowned the ring of the lusty voices.  The little parlor looked warm and snug with its great cobs of old peat glowing red as they burnt away sleepily on the broad hearth.  At intervals the door would open and a shepherd would enter.  He had housed his sheep for the night, and now, seated as the newest comer on the warmest bench near the fire, with a pipe in one hand and a pot of hot ale in the other, he was troubled by the tempest no more.

“At Michaelmas a good fat goose, at Christmas stannen’ pie, and good yal awt year roond,” said an old man in the chimney corner.  This was Matthew Branthwaite, the wit and sage of Wythburn, once a weaver, but living now on the husbandings of earlier life.  He was tall and slight, and somewhat bent with age.  He was dressed in a long brown sack coat, belted at the waist, below which were pockets cut perpendicular at the side.  Ribbed worsted stockings and heavy shoes made up, with the greater garment, the sum of his visible attire.  Old Matthew had a vast reputation for wise saws and proverbs; his speech seemed to be made of little else; and though the dalespeople had heard the old sayings a thousand times, these seemed never to lose anything of their piquancy and rude force.

“It’s a bad night, Mattha Branthet,” said a new-comer.

“Dost tak me for a born idiot?” asked the old man.  “Dost think I duddent known that afore I saw thee, that thou must be blodderen oot,’ It’s a bad neet, Mattha Branthet?’” There was a dash of rustic spite in the old man’s humor which gave it an additional relish.

“Ye munnet think to win through the world on a feather bed, lad,” he added.