lds within hedgerows, and in the sunny
mirage of the farthest azure remoteness hints of lonesome moorland. It
was not till near three that I went down along the river, then, near
Rokeby, traversing the old meadow, and ascending the old hill: and
there, as of old, was the little black square with yellow letters on the
gate-wall:
HUNT HILL HOUSE.
No part, no house, I believe, of this country-side was empty of strange
corpses: and they were in Hunt Hill, too. I saw three in the weedy plot
to the right of the garden-path, where once the hawthorn and lilac tree
had grown from well-rollered grass, and in the little bush-wilderness to
the left, which was always a wilderness, one more: and in the
breakfast-room, to the right of the hall, three; and in the new wooden
clinker-built attachment opening upon the breakfast-room, two, half
under the billiard-table; and in her room overlooking the porch on the
first floor, the long thin form of my mother on her bed, with crushed-in
left temple, and at the foot of the bed, face-downward on the floor,
black-haired Ada in a night-dress.
Of all the men and women who died, they two alone had burying. For I
digged a hole with the stable-spade under the front lilac; and I wound
them in the sheets, foot and form and head; and, not without throes and
qualms, I bore and buried them there.
* * * * *
Some time passed after this before the long, multitudinous, and
perplexing task of visiting the mine-regions again claimed me. I found
myself at a place called Ingleborough, which is a big table-mountain,
with a top of fifteen to twenty acres, from which the sea is visible
across Lancashire to the west; and in the sides of this strange hill are
a number of caves which I searched during three days, sleeping in a
garden-shed at a very rural and flower-embowered village, for every room
in it was thronged, a place marked Clapham in the chart, in Clapdale,
which latter is a dale penetrating the slopes of the mountain: and there
I found by far the greatest of the caves which I saw, having ascended a
path from the village to a hollow between two grass slopes, where there
is a beck, and so entering an arch to the left, screened by trees, into
the limestone cliff. The passage narrows pretty rapidly inwards, and I
had not proceeded two yards before I saw the clear traces of a great
battle here. All this region had, in fact, been invaded, for the cave
must have been fa
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