proud of their freehold property and were
now casting their eyes upon the moorland pastures above. They agreed
that the sheep would crop the grass more closely if confined by walls
within a certain space, and the fees paid to the shepherd for his labour
would be saved; for each farmer would be able to look after his own
sheep. But what weighed with them most was the pride of individual
possession compared with which the privilege of sharing with their
neighbours in communal rights over the whole moor seemed of small
account. Moreover, stones for walling were plentiful, and the disbanding
of the armies after the French wars had made labour cheap.

At first Peregrine refused to believe the rumour; the moors, he argued
with himself, had always been commons and commons they must remain. Yet
the rumour persisted and gradually began to work like poison in his
mind. He was too proud to mention the matter to the farmers when they
came up for the autumn salving of the sheep, but a constraint in their
manner deepened his suspicions, and all through the winter a pall of
gloom enshrouded his mind like the pall of gloom on the moors
themselves. Spring brought dark foreboding to yet darker certainty. From
his mountain eyrie Peregrine could now see bands of men assembling in
the village below. They were wallers, attracted thither by the prospect
of definite work during the summer months, and on Easter Monday a start
was made. Peregrine watched them from the fells, and as he saw them
carrying the blocks of limestone in their hands they seemed to him like
an army of stinging ants which had been disturbed in their ant-hill and
were carrying their eggs to another spot.

Slowly but surely the work advanced. At first the walls took a beeline
track up the hillside, but when they reached the higher ground, where
scars of rock and patches of reedy swamp lay in their path, their
progress became serpentine. But whether straight or winding, the white
walls mounted ever upwards, and Peregrine knew that his doom was sealed.
The moors which Ibbotsons had shepherded for two hundred years would
soon pass out of his charge; the most ancient of callings, which
Peregrine loved as he loved life itself, would be his no more; his
mountain home, which had stood the shock of an age-long battle with the
storms, would pass into the hand of some dalesman's hind, and he would
be forced to descend to the valley and end his days in one or other of
the smoky towns