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Soft sounds of wind, rising and falling along the mountain or stirring amid last year's bracken, pursued them, till they reached the edge of the ghyll, and, descending its side, found the water murmuring among the stones, the only audible thing in a deep shade and silence. They sat down by the stream, and Fenwick, taking up some pebbles, began to drop them nervously into the water.
Grace smiled as she got up and gave him her hand. "Well done! Have you brought them all? But of course you have!" "They're in the pen," Kit answered, with some embarrassment. Then Railton stood up, leaning awkwardly on his stick. "I've misdoubted your new-fashioned plans, and ken that I was wrang. There's nea ither lad in aw t' dale could ha' browt Herdwicks doon Bleatarn ghyll last neet.
The wrinkled dame said that pedestrians often went that way, and Wyllard asked a question casually. "There are some prosperous folks people of station living round here? "There's the vicar. I don't know that he's what you'd call prosperous. Then there's Mr. Martindale, of Rushyholme, and Little, of the Ghyll."
Thornburgh had asked of him, with a manner of admirable indifference, whether he felt inclined for an evening walk to High Ghyll to inquire after Mary Backhouse. The request fell in excellently with a lover's restlessness, and Robert assented at once. The vicar saw him go with puzzled brows and a quick look at his wife, whose head was bent close over her worsted work.
"I doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in Reuben's Ghyll will be fit for her drawin-room floor in less than seven," Cloke drawled. "Yes, that's my work," said Sophie. "And we shan't even know where we've gone wrong with your new carriage drive before that time either," said Cloke, ever anxious to keep the balance true with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour.
Sylvia viewed the old building with appreciation. It stood, long and low and cleanly white-washed, on the brink of a deep ghyll filled with lichened boulders and russet ferns, with a firwood close behind it, and in front a wide vista of moors and fells that stood out darkly blue against the evening light. Near the stone porch, a rustic table stood beside a row of tall red hollyhocks.
This round by the Langdale Pikes and Dungeon Ghyll was one of their best days; or, at least, Molly and her brother thought so; for to those two the presence of Lesbia and her chaperon was always a restraint. Mary could walk twice as far as her elder sister, and revelled in hill-side paths and all manner of rough places.
The sky itself would have been cloudless but for one long scarf of plaited white which wore away across a lake of blue. The ghyll fell like a furled flag. The thin river under the clustering leaves sang beneath its breath. The sun was hot and the air was drowsed by the hum of insects. And full of happy people was the meadow between the old house on the Moss and the pack-horse road in front of it.
I have been seeking, and meseemeth, though the way be long, it is not utterly blind for us. Or look thou, Raven-son, is there not a path yonder that leadeth onward up to the brow of the ghyll again? and as I have seen, it leadeth on again down from the said brow."
But before it is told whereto Wildlake's Way led, it must be said that on the east side of the ghyll, where it first began just over the Portway, the hill's brow was clear of wood for a certain space, and there, overlooking all the Dale, was the Mote-stead of the Dalesmen, marked out by a great ring of stones, amidst of which was the mound for the Judges and the Altar of the Gods before it.
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