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
a lonely farm on the further slope. There was a fir-wood above this,
and as I passed over the hill, among the tall, bare stems, the clouds
parted a little in the west, and let a flood of golden light into the
wood. Instantly the gloom seemed to disappear, and beyond the dark
shoulder of moorland, where the Cook monument appeared against the
glory of the sunset, there seemed to reign an all-pervading peace, the
wood being quite silent, for the wind had dropped.

The rough track through the trees descended hurriedly, and soon gave a
wide view over Kildale. The valley was full of colour from the glowing
west, and the steep hillsides opposite appeared lighter than the indigo
clouds above, now slightly tinged with purple. The little village of
Kildale nestled down below, its church half buried in yellow foliage.

The ruined Danby Castle can still be seen on the slope above the Esk,
but the ancient Bow Bridge at Castleton, which was built at the end of
the twelfth century, was barbarously and needlessly destroyed in 1873.
A picture of the bridge has, fortunately, been preserved in Canon
Atkinson's 'Forty Years in a Moorland Parish.' That book has been so
widely read that it seems scarcely necessary to refer to it here, but
without the help of the Vicar, who knew every inch of his wild parish,
the Danby district must seem much less interesting.

CHAPTER VIII

GUIS