Visions of a good hotel which we felt sure we should find at John o’ Groat’s began to haunt us, and the more hungry we became the brighter were our anticipations of the good fare that awaited us.  But judge of our surprise and disappointment when a man whom we met on the road told us there was no hotel there at all!  We asked if he thought we could get lodgings at John o’ Groat’s House itself, but the sardonic grin that spread over his features when he told us that that house had vanished long ago was cruel.  The information gave us quite a shock, and our spirits seemed to fall below zero as we turned our backs on the man without even thanking him for answering our questions.  We felt not too full, but too empty for words, as we were awfully hungry, and I heard my brother murmur something that sounded very like “Liar”; but the man’s information turned out to be perfectly correct.  Our luggage also began to feel heavier, and the country gradually became more wild and desolate.  Our spirits revived a little when a fisherman told us of a small inn that we should reach a mile or two before coming to John o’ Groat’s.  We thought we had surely come to the end of everywhere when we reached the “Huna Inn,” for it stood some distance from any other house and at the extreme end of an old lane that terminated at the sea.  It was a small, primitive structure, but it was now our only hope, as far as we knew, for obtaining lodgings, and we could scarcely restrain our delight when we were told we could be accommodated there until Monday morning.  It was an intense relief to us to be separated from our cumbersome luggage, and we must say that Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie did all in their power to make us comfortable and happy and to make us feel at home.  We contented ourselves with some light refreshments which to some non-pedestrians might have appeared decidedly heavy, and then decided to see all that remained of John o’ Groat’s House.

Walking along the beach for about a mile and a half, the distance we were told that separated the ruins from the inn, we failed to find them, and were about to return when we met a shepherd who said we had already passed them.  We therefore returned with him, as he told us he was going to the inn, and he showed us a few mounds of earth covered with grass which marked the site of the foundations of John o’ Groat’s House, but the stones had been removed to build a storehouse, or granary, at a place he pointed out in the distance.  We were rather disappointed, as we expected to find some extensive remains, and, seeing they were so very scanty, we wondered why, in a land where stones were so plentiful, some monument or inscribed stone had not been erected to mark the site where this remarkable house once stood, as, in the absence of some one to direct them, strangers, like ourselves, might pass and repass these remains without noticing them.  We were not long in reaching the inn, for the shepherd was a big man and took very