how one day he met a whole troop of these
speculative characters, each with his bird in
basket immured. He made a feint of being
ngry with the trespassers, threatening to
take them into custody, unless they emptied
all their pockets on the stone and turned out
their birds for him to fire at. The first
command was obeyed promptly, and the stone
table was quickly covered with a medley of
halfpence, shillings, and raw steaks; but
there was considerable hesitation in obeying
the other half of the order, as each man was
unwilling to risk the life of his pigeon. I
need scarcely say that the pigeons were left as
unharmed as the people by whom they were
owned. The steaks were all cooked at the
nearest inn, and his honour's health was
drunk in foaming glasses. This story
reminded us, that the moor air had sharpened
our own appetites; so, to gratify them, we
went our way to the gamekeeper's lodge.

This was a small cottage in a genuine oasis
of green field. "We were met by one of Sam's
seventeen; a boy with swollen eyes and a face
like a huge Christmas pudding with the spice
left out. " Why, Tommy, what ails thee?"
"T'bays stanged me." And there were the
bees sure enough, by hundreds, ready to
sting us had we meddled in their house-
keeping. There was a city of bees lodged in
two or three hundred hives, forming a
picturesque finish to the low hedges surrounding
the lodge. For the payment of a shilling
each neighbour is privileged to bring his
or her hive out to this place among the
heather, where the bees remain for the whole
summer, toiling and taking spoils that they
are never destined to enjoy. Poor Tommy,
so terribly bee-stanged, what is he about
now? Quietly rocking himself in a huge
chair, revelling in the spectacle of a try-
contest between two of his beloved brothers.
Even in this smiling oasis of the desert there
is strife. The sons of Sam were fighting for
possession of a stocking. The prize was
worth defending, as the possessor of it
thought, according to the report of his
envious brother who stayed his hand in
battle only long enough to explain to us
how " I says, I munna ha' it till I pughs his
leg off."

Having quieted the disputants with a few
sweetmeats, we repaired to a barn-shed,
where we were as merry as Moselle and a
good dinner could make us. Horace himself
might have been disposed to fight us for our
luscious wine and grapes iced in the mountain
streamlet. Our feast was served on china,
with a device adapted to the occasion—to
wit, a cock grouse for centre ornament,
surrounded by heather and fern-leaves. Then,
for siesta afterwards, commend me to the
sweet heather couch, with the blue sky for a
tent and the whizzing of the startled moorgame
for lullaby. If one wished to hear the
end of the moor anecdotes which Mr. Aibee
began and I dare say brought to a close, it

would have been well to have reclined on
something much less comfortable. I must
confess I was asleep before we had heard all
the effect of the great storm of eighteen
hundred and thirty-seven on the neighbouring
cottages. One poor woman (I remember
so much) got out of bed and hastened up to
the moor, as the safest place to sleep in.
"But I soon turned back," said she, " for I
met a haystack and a cottage coomin dowan
right i' my road."

Over the hilltop, through sundry bogginesses,
and taking donkey-leaps over many a
streamlet, we journeyed next to the lane by
the highroad, and came to the summer-
residence of the Hermit of Heatly. Our
way in, was through a gateway guarded
by a massive log of wood, which threatened
to come down upon the head of any one who
did not use his hand in pushing it aside. The
log, or door, barred the way into a small
enclosure of cultivated potato ground. At
the extreme end of another small
potato-field, two little girls—one holding
a pitcher of milk—were guarding, like
two Caryatides, a confused pile of stones.
Is it possible that a human creature can
actually choose to live in such a sty? We
peered into the interior of one-half of this
miserable heap of paving-stones—for it is
divided into two with the idea, perhaps,
of supplying a spare bed-chamber to
any friend. A man, or I had better say a
beast, upwards of seventy years old, lay
coiled inside, buried among straw. "Little
girl, tell me, does he always sleep here?"
"Aye, he ligs i' his clooas," said she. Nothing
more could we learn from the terrified little
children, who clung to each other whispering
confidence and encouragement, as the old
hermit, seeing company, pushed away his
bedclothes of straw with a thick stick.
This was preparatory to rising: but
rising was no easy matter, as his apartment
was contrived after the fashion of a low
tomb or a mummy-case. The hermit's
stick inserted in the projecting stones above,
served as a pivot on which he could turn
himself round. That evolution effected with
difficulty, he managed to come out to us
backwards, in a most undignified
manner, and, seating himself on a stone
began to sing verses of Scripture and
profane songs intermingled, with such mad
incoherency, and in so rich a tone, that we
knew not whether we were shocked or pleased.
While he was chanting, one of us directed
his attention to a timid bachelor of the party:
to whom the hermit hymned out, with the
whole force of his lungs, much to the quiet
man's annoyance,

      Thy wife shall be a fruitful vine,
      And round thy neck her arms shall twine.
     Ten olive branches in a row
      Shall round about thy table go.

"Do you always live here? " ventured a
little female voice, hoping to divert attention