LAURA SILVER BELL


In the five Northumbrian counties you will scarcely find so bleak,
ugly, and yet, in a savage way, so picturesque a moor as Dardale Moss.
The moor itself spreads north, south, east, and west, a great
undulating sea of black peat and heath.

What we may term its shores are wooded wildly with birch, hazel, and
dwarf-oak. No towering mountains surround it, but here and there you
have a rocky knoll rising among the trees, and many a wooded
promontory of the same pretty, because utterly wild, forest, running
out into its dark level.

Habitations are thinly scattered in this barren territory, and a full
mile away from the meanest was the stone cottage of Mother Carke.

Let not my southern reader who associates ideas of comfort with the
term "cottage" mistake. This thing is built of shingle, with low
walls. Its thatch is hollow; the peat-smoke curls stingily from its
stunted chimney. It is worthy of its savage surroundings.

The primitive neighbours remark that no rowan-tree grows near, nor
holly, nor bracken, and no horseshoe is nailed on the door.

Not far from the birches and hazels that straggle about the rude wall