In the five Northumbrian counties you will scarcely
find so bleak, ugly, and yet, in a savage way, so
picturesque a moor as Dardale Moss. The moor
itself spreads north, south, east, and west, a great
undulating sea of black peat and heath.
What we may term its shores are wooded wildly with
birch, hazel, and dwarf-oak. No towering mountains
surround it, but here and there you have a rocky knoll
rising among the trees, and many a wooded promontory
of the same pretty, because utterly wild, forest, running
out into its dark level.
Habitations are thinly scattered in this barren territory,
and a full mile away from the meanest was the stone
cottage of Mother Carke.
Let not my southern reader who associates ideas of
comfort with the term “cottage” mistake.
This thing is built of shingle, with low walls.
Its thatch is hollow; the peat-smoke curls stingily
from its stunted chimney. It is worthy of its
savage surroundings.
The primitive neighbours remark that no rowan-tree
grows near, nor holly, nor bracken, and no horseshoe
is nailed on the door.
Not far from the birches and hazels that straggle
about the rude wall of the little enclosure, on the
contrary, they say, you may discover the broom and
the rag-wort, in which witches mysteriously delight.
But this is perhaps a scandal.
Mall Carke was for many a year the sage femme
of this wild domain. She has renounced practice,
however, for some years; and now, under the rose,
she dabbles, it is thought, in the black art, in which
she has always been secretly skilled, tells fortunes,
practises charms, and in popular esteem is little
better than a witch.
Mother Carke has been away to the town of Willarden,
to sell knit stockings, and is returning to her rude
dwelling by Dardale Moss. To her right, as far
away as the eye can reach, the moor stretches.
The narrow track she has followed here tops a gentle
upland, and at her left a sort of jungle of dwarf-oak
and brushwood approaches its edge. The sun is
sinking blood-red in the west. His disk has touched
the broad black level of the moor, and his parting
beams glare athwart the gaunt figure of the old beldame,
as she strides homeward stick in hand, and bring into
relief the folds of her mantle, which gleam like the
draperies of a bronze image in the light of a fire.
For a few moments this light floods the air—tree,
gorse, rock, and bracken glare; and then it is out,
and gray twilight over everything.
All is still and sombre. At this hour the simple
traffic of the thinly-peopled country is over, and
nothing can be more solitary.
From this jungle, nevertheless, through which the
mists of evening are already creeping, she sees a
gigantic man approaching her.
In that poor and primitive country robbery is a crime
unknown. She, therefore, has no fears for her
pound of tea, and pint of gin, and sixteen shillings
in silver which she is bringing home in her pocket.
But there is something that would have frighted another
woman about this man.
