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"Nor do I, really," said Ralph, speaking out the inmost soul that is in every young man. As Ralph Peden sat looking at Winsome the thought came sometimes to him but not often "This is Allan Welsh's daughter, the daughter of the woman whom my father once loved, who lies so still under the green sod of Crossthwaite beneath the lea of Skiddaw."

Let the reader conceive to himself a clear frosty November morning, the scene an open heath, having for the background that huge chain of mountains in which Skiddaw and Saddleback are preeminent; let him look along that BLIND ROAD, by which I mean the track so slightly marked by the passengers' footsteps that it can but be traced by a slight shade of verdure from the darker heath around it, and, being only visible to the eye when at some distance, ceases to be distinguished while the foot is actually treading it; along this faintly-traced path advances the object of our present narrative.

But Fairford felt annoyed with deadly sickness, as well as by pain of a distressing and oppressive character; and neither Criffel, rising in majesty on the one hand, nor the distant yet more picturesque outline of Skiddaw and Glaramara upon the other, could attract his attention in the manner in which it was usually fixed by beautiful scenery, and especially that which had in it something new as well as striking.

Charles Lamb, describing it many years since, says: "Upon a small hill by the side of Skiddaw, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a nest of mountains" dwells Robert Southey.

In geology itself we find the strength of many able men occupied in debating questions of which there are yet no data even for the clear statement; and in seizing advanced theoretical positions on the mere contingency of their being afterwards tenable; while, in the meantime, no simple person, taking a holiday in Cumberland, can get an intelligible section of Skiddaw, or a clear account of the origin of the Skiddaw slates; and while, though half the educated society of London travel every summer over the great plain of Switzerland, none know, or care to know, why that is a plain, and the Alps to the south of it are Alps; and whether or not the gravel of the one has anything to do with the rocks of the other.

LET the reader conceive to himself a clear frosty November morning, the scene an open heath, having for the background that huge chain of mountains in which Skiddaw and Saddleback are pre-eminent; let him look along that blind road, by which I mean the track so slightly marked by the passengers' footsteps that it can but be traced by a slight shade of verdure from the darker heath around it and, being only visible to the eye when at some distance, ceases to be distinguished while the foot is actually treading it along this faintly-traced path advances the object of our present narrative.

The graveyard where his body lies is not so rural and picturesque as that where Wordsworth is buried; although Skiddaw rises behind it, and the Greta is murmuring at no very great distance away. But the spot itself has a somewhat bare and bold aspect, with no shadow of trees, no shrubbery.

Upon a slope of the mountain, not far from Keswick, is a Druids' circle, whose builders scores of centuries ago watched the mists on Skiddaw's summit, as the people there do now, to foretell a change of weather as the clouds might rise or fall, for they tell us that "If Skiddaw hath a cap, Scruffel wots full well of that."

I shall never forget how ye lay about that night, like an intrenchment; gone to bed, as it seemed, for the night." They tarried there one night, and met Lloyd. They clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, "and went to Grassmere, Ambleside, Ullswater, and over the middle of Helvellyn." Coleridge then dwelt upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, quite "enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains."

Pausing here, Maxwell gazed down on the one hand to the rich fields and well-timbered lands of Hoddam; on the other hand across Solway to where below the deep-piled, purple masses of Helvellyn and Skiddaw lay 'merry Carlisle' the abode of my Lord Wharton. Maxwell shook his fist across Solway, as though in defiance. Then he turned about and rode slowly home.