by regular lines of grayish black. But as the walker penetrates
further, beyond a certain bend which the stream makes half-way from
the head of the dale, the hills grow steeper, the breadth between
them contracts, the enclosure lines are broken and deflected by
rocks and patches of plantation, and the few farms stand more boldly
and conspicuously forward, each on its spur of land, looking up to
or away from the great masses of frowning crag which close in the
head of the valley, and which from the moment they come into sight
give it dignity and a wild beauty.

On one of these solitary houses, the afternoon sun, about to descend
before very long behind the hills dividing Long Whindale from
Shanmoor, was still lingering on this May afternoon we are describing,
bringing out the whitewashed porch and the broad bands of white
edging the windows, into relief against the gray stone of the main
fabric, the gray roof overhanging it, and the group of sycamores
and Scotch firs which protected it from the cold east and north.
The Western light struck full on a copper beech, which made a welcome
patch of warm color in front of a long gray line of outhouses
standing level with the house, and touched the heckberry blossom
which marked the upward course of the little lane connecting the
old farm with the road; above it rose the green fell, broken here
and there by jutting crags, and below it the ground sank rapidly
through a piece of young hazel plantation, at this present moment
a sheet of bluebells, toward the level of the river. There was a
dainty and yet sober brightness about the whole picture. Summer
in the North is for Nature a time of expansion and of joy as it is
elsewhere, but there is none of that opulence, that sudden splendor
and superabundance, which mark it in the South. In these bare green
valleys there is a sort of delicate austerity even in the summer;