The cottage was situated immediately under a tall rock, which in
some measure beetled over it, as if threatening to drop some detached
fragment from its brow on the frail tenement beneath. The hut itself was
constructed of turf and stones, and rudely roofed over with thatch, much
of which was in a dilapidated condition. The thin blue smoke rose from
it in a light column, and curled upward along the white face of the
incumbent rock, giving the scene a tint of exquisite softness. In a
small and rude garden, surrounded by straggling elder-bushes, which
formed a sort of imperfect hedge, sat near to the beehives, by the
produce of which she lived, that "woman old" whom Lucy had brought her
father hither to visit.
Whatever there had been which was disastrous in her fortune, whatever
there was miserable in her dwelling, it was easy to judge by the first
glance that neither years, poverty, misfortune, nor infirmity had broken
the spirit of this remarkable woman.
She occupied a turf seat, placed under a weeping birch of unusual
magnitude and age, as Judah is represented sitting under her palm-tree,
with an air at once of majesty and of dejection.
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