al it; and Ralph lay down to
sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier
heart.

When he took up his shepherd's staff that morning, he turned towards
Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half
faced the purple heights of Blencathra. It was brant from side to
side, and as rugged as steep. Ralph did not ascend the screes, out
went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders.
The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but
perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the
frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he
passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep
of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind
carried their call away until it died off into a moan.

When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the
protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him.
Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head
sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the
thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's
voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a
cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a
man to pass in. Great bowlders stood above and about it.

The sun could never shine into it. A huge rock stood alone and
apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an
iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim
where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look.
Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in
that Solitary place. The weird ditty suited well with both.

She lean'd her head against a thorn,
_The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_;
And there she has her young babe born,
_And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.

She's howket a grave by the light o' the moon,
_The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'_;
And there she's buried her sweet babe in,
_And the lyon shall be lord of a'_.

The singer stopped, as though conscious of the presence of a listener,
and looking up from where he sat on a round block of timber, cutting
up a similar block into firewood, he saw Ralph Ray leaning on his
staff near the cave's mouth. He had already heard of the sorrow that
had fallen on the household at Sho