valley came drowsy sounds that tell the wane of day, and please the ear
of evening as she draws her curtains over the world. A woman's voice
floated up from the pastures of an old farm-house, below where I sat,
calling the cattle home. The barking of dogs sounded clear in different
parts of the vale, and about scattered hamlets, on the hill sides. I
could hear the far-off prattle of a company of girls, mingled with the
lazy joltings of a cart, the occasional crack of a whip, and the surly
call of a driver to his horses, upon the high road, half a mile below
me. From a wooded slope, on the opposite side of the valley, the crack
of a gun came, waking the echoes for a minute; and then all seemed to
sink into a deeper stillness than before, and the dreamy surge of sound
broke softer and softer upon the shores of evening, as daylight sobered
down. High above the green valley, on both sides, the moorlands
stretched away in billowy wildernesses--dark, bleak, and almost
soundless, save where the wind harped his wild anthem upon the heathery
waste, and where roaring streams filled the lonely cloughs with drowsy
uproar. It was a striking scene, and it was an impressive hour. The
bold, round, flat-topped height of Musbury Tor stood gloomily proud, on
the opposite side, girdled off from the rest of the hills by a green
vale. The lofty outlines of Aviside and Holcombe were glowing with the
gorgeous hues of a cloudless October sunset. Along those wild ridges the
soldiers of ancient Rome marched from Manchester to Preston, when boars
and wolves ranged the woods and thickets of the Irwell valley. The
stream is now lined all the way with busy populations, and evidences of
great wealth and enterprise. But the spot from which I looked down upon
it was still naturally wild. The hand of man had left no mark there,
except the grass-grown pack-horse road. There was no sound nor sign of
life immediately around me.

The wind was cold, and daylight was dying down. It was getting too