It was a brilliant afternoon toward the end of May. The spring had
been unusually cold and late, and it was evident from the general
aspect of the lonely Westmoreland valley of Long Whindale that
warmth and sunshine had only just penetrated to its bare, green
recesses, where the few scattered trees were fast rushing into their
full summer dress, while at their feet, and along the bank of the
stream, the flowers of March and April still lingered, as though
they found it impossible to believe that their rough brother, the
east wind, had at last deserted them. The narrow road, which was
the only link between the farm-houses sheltered by the crags at the
head of the valley, and those far away regions of town and civilization
suggested by the smoke wreaths of Whinborough on the southern
horizon, was lined with masses of the white heckberry or bird-cherry,
and ran, an arrowy line of white through the greenness of the sloping
pastures. The sides of some of the little books running down into
the main river and, many of the plantations round the farms were
gay with the same tree, so that the farm-houses, gray-roofed and
gray-walled, standing in the hollows of the fells, seemed here and
there to have been robbed of all their natural austerity of aspect,
and to be masquerading in a dainty garb of white and green imposed
upon them by the caprice of the spring.

During the greater part of its course the valley of Long Whindale
is tame and featureless. The hills at the lower part are low and
rounded, and the sheep and cattle pasture over slopes unbroken
either by wood or rock. The fields are bare and close shaven by the
flocks which feed on them; the walls run either perpendicularly in
many places up the fells or horizontally along them, so that, save
for the wooded course of the tumbling river and the bush-grown
hedges of the road, the whole valley looks like a green map divided