It was such a lovely summer morning, one of those brilliant, glorious days when the world looks as if it had been newly created, and came to us with a whiff of Paradise about it. Down in the village the cottage gardens were ablaze with flowers, and even old Ephraim had forgotten his rheumatism, and crawled out to bask in the hot sunshine on the low wall, and called out a friendly 'Good-marnin'!' as the children went by. Past the forge, whence the cheery chink, chink of the blacksmith's hammer came mingled with the refrain of a stirring melody from a good bass voice; under the spreading yew-trees of the churchyard, and out through the lych-gate to the old mill, where the great wheel was turning slowly round, its dripping blades gleaming bright in the sunshine; up the steep path through the little hazel-wood, scrambling over the ladder-like stile into the narrow lane that ran ever uphill towards the mountains, which loomed before them, rugged in outline, and shaded in a mist of purple blue. The hedgerows had given place to stone walls now, loosely built without any mortar, and with green ferns and pennywort growing in the crevices, and forget-me-nots in the ditch below. On and up, on and up, with the great blue hills always rising higher before them, till at length even the stone walls vanished, and they were on the bare moorland, with only a slight foot-track for a road.