orses to regain their footing, and
bear them safely to land.

It seems that their pursuers were still outdone, for their stronghold
was open to receive them; and the enemy, foiled in their expectations,
returned with all speed into Cumberland, lest during their absence
some more dangerous foe from the Borders should lay waste their
possessions.

[Illustration: THE RING AND THE CLIFF]

THE RING AND THE CLIFF.

"And still I tried each fickle art,[ii]
Importunate and vain;
And while his passion touched my heart,
I triumphed in his pain."

--GOLDSMITH.

Having in vain attempted to ascertain the locality of the
following tradition, we suspect that it may have strayed
originally from another county, though it has taken root in our
own.

The only place that could by any possibility answer the
description which marks the catastrophe is the high ridge above
Broughton, in Furness; and even here it would be difficult to
point out any single spot which would exactly correspond in
every particular.

The Lancashire coast, with here and there an exception, is one
low bank or ridge of sand, loosely drifted into hillocks of but
mean height and appearance; only preserving their consistency
by reason of the creeping roots of the bent or sea-mat weed
(_Arundo arenaria_)[16] which bind the loose sands together,
and prevent them from being dispersed over the adjoining
grounds. On the opposite coast fancy might often recognise
those very cliffs to which our story alludes; perpendicular,
bare, and almost inaccessible, with rents and chasms, where
little difficulty would be found in pointing out the exact
features represented in this tradition.

On the sea-coast, where a wild bare promontory stretches out amidst
the waves of the Irish Channel, is a small hamlet or fishing station.
Its site is in the cleft of a deep ravine, through which a small
stream lazily trickles amid sand and sea-slime to the little estuary
formed by the sea at its mouth. Between almost perpendicular cliffs
the village lies like a solitary enclosure, where the inhabitants are
separate and alone--aloof from the busy world--their horizon confined
to a mere segment of vision. The same ever-rolling sea hath swung to
and fro for ages in the same narrow creek, at the sides of which rise
a cluster of huts, dignified with the app