the smoke wreaths of Whinborough on
the southern horizon, was lined with masses of the white heckberry or
bird-cherry, and ran, an arrowy line of white through the greenness of
the sloping pastures. The sides of some of the little books running down
into the main river and, many of the plantations round the farms
were gay with the same tree, so that the farm-houses, gray-roofed and
gray-walled, standing in the hollows of the fells, seemed here and there
to have been robbed of all their natural austerity of aspect, and to be
masquerading in a dainty garb of white and green imposed upon them by
the caprice of the spring.

During the greater part of its course the valley of Long Whindale is
tame and featureless. The hills at the lower part are low and rounded,
and the sheep and cattle pasture over slopes unbroken either by wood or
rock. The fields are bare and close shaven by the flocks which feed on
them; the walls run either perpendicularly in many places up the fells
or horizontally along them, so that, save for the wooded course of the
tumbling river and the bush-grown hedges of the road, the whole valley
looks like a green map divided by regular lines of grayish black. But
as the walker penetrates further, beyond a certain bend which the stream
makes half-way from the head of the dale, the hills grow steeper, the
breadth between them contracts, the enclosure lines are broken and
deflected by rocks and patches of plantation, and the few farms stand
more boldly and conspicuously forward, each on its spur of land, looking
up to or away from the great masses of frowning crag which close in the
head of the valley, and which from the moment they come into sight give
it dignity and a wild beauty.

On one of these solitary houses, the afternoon sun, about to descend
before very long behind the hills dividing Long Whindale from Shanmoor,
was still lingering on this May afternoon we are describing, bringing
out the whitewashed porch and the broad bands of white edging the
windows, into relief against the gray stone of the main fabric, the gray
roof overhanging it, and the group of sycamores and Scotch firs which
protected it from the cold east and north. The Western light struck full
on a copper beech, which made a welcome patch of warm color in front of
a long gray line of outhouses standing level with the house, and touched
the heckberry blossom which marked the upward course of the little lane
connecting the old farm with