oup. They were
not above trembling at the mention of these mysteries when the moon
was flying across a darksome sky, when the wind moaned about the
house, and they were gathered around the ingle nook. They had few
channels of communication with the great world without. The pack-horse
pedler was their swiftest newsman; the pedler on foot was their weekly
budget. Five miles along the pack-horse road to the north stood their
market town of Gaskarth, where they took their wool or the cloth they
had woven from it. From the top of Lauvellen they could see the white
sails of the ships that floated down the broad Solway. These were all
but their only glimpses of the world beyond their mountains. It was a
mysterious and fearsome world.

There was, however, one link that connected the people of Wythburn
with the world outside. To the north of the city and the mere there
lived a family of sheep farmers who were known as the Rays of
Shoulthwaite Moss. The family consisted of husband and wife and two
sons. The head of the house, Angus Ray, came to the district early in
life from the extreme Cumbrian border. He was hardly less than a giant
in stature. He had limbs of great length, and muscles like the gnarled
heads of a beech. Upon settling at Wythburn, he speedily acquired
property of various kinds, and in the course of a few years he was the
largest owner of sheep on the country side. Certainly, fortune favored
Angus Ray, and not least noticeably when in due course he looked about
him for a wife.

Mary Ray did not seem to have many qualities in common with her
husband. She had neither the strength of limb nor the agile grace of
the mountaineer. This was partly the result of the conditions under
which her girlhood had been spent. She was the only child of a
dalesman, who had so far accumulated estate in land as to be known in
the vernacular as a statesman. Her mother had died at her birth, and
before she had attained to young womanhood her father, who had married
late in life, was feeble and unfit for labor. His hand was too
nervous, his eye too uncertain, his breath too short for the constant
risks of mountaineering; so he put away all further thought of adding
store to store, and settled himself peaceably in his cottage under
Castenand, content with the occasional pleasures afforded by his
fiddle, an instrument upon which he had from his youth upward shown
some skill. In this quiet life his daughter was his sole companion.

Th