CHAPTER I.

THE CITY OF WYTHBURN.

Tar-ry woo', tar-ry woo',
Tar-ry woo' is ill to spin:
Card it weel, card it weel,
Card it weel ere you begin. _Old Ballad._


The city of Wythburn stood in a narrow valley at the foot of
Lauvellen, and at the head of Bracken Water. It was a little but
populous village, inhabited chiefly by sheep farmers, whose flocks
grazed on the neighboring hills. It contained rather less than a
hundred houses, all deep thatched and thick walled. To the north lay
the mere, a long and irregular water, which was belted across the
middle by an old Roman bridge of bowlders. A bare pack-horse road
wound its way on the west, and stretched out of sight to the north and
to the south. On this road, about half a mile within the southernmost
extremity of Bracken Water, two hillocks met, leaving a natural
opening between them and a path that went up to where the city stood.
The dalesmen called the cleft between the hillocks the city gates; but
why the gates and why the city none could rightly say. Folks had
always given them these names. The wiser heads shook gravely as they
told you that city should be sarnty, meaning the house by the
causeway. The historians of the plain could say no more.