employment at Whitby, the excellent character he gained when he went to
sea, and Professor J.K. Laughton's statement that he left Staithes
'after some disagreement with his master,' there seems every reason to
believe that the story is untrue.

I have seldom seen a more uninhabited and inhospitable-looking country
than the broad extent of purple hills that stretch away to the
south-west from Great Ayton and Kildale Moors. Walking from Guisborough
to Kildale on a wild and stormy afternoon in October, I was totally
alone for the whole distance when I had left behind me the baker's boy
who was on his way to Hutton with a heavy basket of bread and cakes.
Hutton, which is somewhat of a model village for the retainers attached
to Hutton Hall, stands in a lovely hollow at the edge of the moors. The
steep hills are richly clothed with sombre woods, and the peace and
seclusion reigning there is in marked contrast to the bleak wastes
above. When I climbed the steep road on that autumn afternoon, and,
passing the zone of tall, withered bracken, reached the open moorland,
I seemed to have come out merely to be the plaything of the elements;
for the south-westerly gale, when it chose to do so, blew so fiercely
that it was difficult to make any progress at all. Overhead was a dark
roof composed of heavy masses of cloud, forming long parallel lines of
grey right to the horizon. On each side of the rough, water-worn road
the heather made a low wall, two or three feet high, and stretched
right away to the horizon in every direction. In the lulls, between the
fierce blasts, I could hear the trickle of the water in the rivulets
deep down in the springy cushion of heather. A few nimble sheep would
stare at me from a distance, and then disappear, or some grouse might
hover over a piece of rising ground; but otherwise there were no signs
of living creatures. Nearing Kildale, the road suddenly plunged
downwards to a stream flowing through a green, cultivated valley, with