side, or by the small magnates of secluded hamlets, crimes might be
committed almost unknown, certainly without any great uprising of popular
indignation calculated to bring down the strong arm of the law. It must
be remembered that in those days there was no rural constabulary; and the
few magistrates left to themselves, and generally related to one another,
were most of them inclined to tolerate eccentricity, and to wink at
faults too much like their own.

Men hardly past middle life talk of the days of their youth, spent in
this part of the country, when, during the winter months, they rode up to
the saddle-girths in mud; when absolute business was the only reason for
stirring beyond the precincts of home, and when that business was
conducted under a pressure of difficulties which they themselves, borne
along to Bradford market in a swift first-class carriage, can hardly
believe to have been possible. For instance, one woollen manufacturer
says that, not five and twenty years ago, he had to rise betimes to set
off on a winter's-morning in order to be at Bradford with the great
waggon-load of goods manufactured by his father; this load was packed
over-night, but in the morning there was a great gathering around it, and
flashing of lanterns, and examination of horses' feet, before the
ponderous waggon got under way; and then some one had to go groping here
and there, on hands and knees, and always sounding with a staff down the
long, steep, slippery brow, to find where the horses might tread safely,
until they reached the comparative easy-going of the deep-rutted main
road. People went on horseback over the upland moors, following the
tracks of the pack-horses that carried the parcels, baggage, or goods
from one town to another, between which there did not happen to be a
highway.

But in winter, all such communication was impossible, by reason of the