This was good news to Peggy and Bobby, who were beginning to think that the fishing-baskets were very heavy on their backs, and that it was the longest eight miles they had ever imagined, so they hurried after Father, who made haste now, to make up for the many halts upon the road, for the afternoon was wearing on, and there was much to be done before night. Close beside the lake, on a flat piece of grass sheltered under a high cliff, stood the shepherd's hut, a small one-roomed shanty of rough stones piled up without either mortar or plaster, and roofed with a few tree-trunks covered with turf and heather. The tiny window was hardly a foot square, and had no glass in it, and a beautiful root of parsley fern grew luxuriantly on the sill, while all the crevices of the walls seemed full of lichens, bound together by the crimson stems of the creeping pellitory.