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These were all but their only glimpses of the world beyond their mountains. It was a mysterious and fearsome world. There was, however, one link that connected the people of Wythburn with the world outside. To the north of the city and the mere there lived a family of sheep farmers who were known as the Rays of Shoulthwaite Moss. The family consisted of husband and wife and two sons.
And now, by the power of love, this girl with the face of an angel in its sweetness and simplicity this girl, usually as tremulous as a linnet was about to do what a callous man might shrink from. She followed the pack-horse road beyond the lonnin that turned up to Shoulthwaite, and stopped at the gate of the cottage that stood by the smithy near the bridge.
"Dus'ta mind the fratch thoo telt me aboot atween Angus and auld Wilson?" said Reuben Thwaite to Matthew Branthwaite. "What quarrel was that?" asked Monsey. "Why, the last fratch of all, when Wilson gat the sneck posset frae Shoulthwaite," said Matthew. "I never heard of it," said the schoolmaster. "There's nowt much to hear.
The girls left the dairy, where the churning had made small progress as yet, and went through the kitchen towards the room where the Dame of Shoulthwaite lay in that long silence which had begun sooner with her than with others. As they passed towards the invalid's room, Mrs. Garth came in at the porch.
Following the course of the winding Derwent, they had passed the villages of Stonethwaite and Seathwaite, and in two hours from the time they set out from Shoulthwaite they had reached the foot of Stye Head Pass. The brightness of noon had now given place to the chill leaden atmosphere of a Cumbrian December.
As he did so a paper slipped away from the breast of the dead man. Willy picked it up, and seeing "Ralph Ray" written on the back of it, he handed it to his brother, who thrust it into a pocket unread. Then the two walked back, their dread burden between them. When the dawn of another day rose over Shoulthwaite, a great silence had fallen on the old house on the moss.
It was towards nightfall when Matthew himself came to Shoulthwaite. "I'm the dame's auldest neighbor," he had said at the Red Lion that afternoon, when the event of the night previous had been discussed. "It's nobbut reet 'at I should gang alang to her this awesome day. She'll be glad of the neighborhood of an auld friend's crack."
It will be early morning when the coach gets there, and at daybreak you can walk over the Stye Pass to Shoulthwaite." "I dare not, I dare not; no, no, don't leave me here." Sim's importunity was irresistible, and Ralph yielded more out of pity than by persuasion.
An hour before Rotha left Shoulthwaite, Robbie Anderson was lying on a settle before the fire in the old weaver's kitchen. Mattha himself and his wife were abroad, but Liza had generously and courageously undertaken the task of attending to the needs of the convalescent. "Where's all my hair gone?" asked Robbie, with a puzzled expression. He was rubbing his close-cropped head.
Angus was at the full pitch of indignation. Wilson, he said, had threatened him; or, at least, his own flesh and blood. He had told the man never to come near Shoulthwaite Moss again. "An' he does," said the dalesman, his eyes aflame, "I'll toitle him into the beck till he's as wankle as a wet sack." He was not so old but that he could have kept his word.
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