which jogs to and fro from Richmond to Reeth, a village about half-way up the dale.
The little company with whom I rode to Reeth consisted of an old daleswoman and her daughter, and a woodcutter who sprang up soon after we left Richmond. He was an independent sort of a man, as indeed I found all the dalesmen to be. There is a practical equality among them, arising from similarity of position and education, which shows itself in many ways. Farther up the dale, I was told, the servants sit in the same parlour as their master and mistress, and call them, with the simple familiarity of friends, Tom and Mary.
The woodcutter was very talkative. He was employed in cutting down small, or "spring-wood," as he phrased it, used for the purpose of making supports to the cuttings in the lead mines. He was paid 4d. a dozen, but the dozen was reckoned in a curious way. Twenty-four small sticks, or one pole of ten feet, were alike regarded as equivalent to a dozen. He found employment nearly all the year round, and was evidently not badly off. He thought there were not many poor people in the dale—that is, people in want. On the contrary, many poor-looking men were very rich, and had hundreds of pounds in the bank. Those who live near the moor can feed their stock for nothing, live in the barest manner, and save little by little. In describing the dalesmen, we must reverse the line—
"His vices lean to virtue's side,"
for their frugality and prudence too often degenerate into mere avarice and selfishness. The woodcutter spoke of one man, worth £2000, who hired himself as a day-labourer to his brother, because by so doing it cost him nothing to live. I was told of another man who lived at the rate of about £20 a year, and suffered all the anxieties of the wealthy miser. "No one," he was heard to say, "knew what it was to sleep on seven thousand pounds."
From Richmond to Reeth the Swale comes dashing an< sparkling over the stones which lie scattered everywhere in it shallow bed. Right up from its banks, sometimes almost precipitously, the rocks rise clothed with thick woods, while, high above, their scarred and lofty ridges wind circuitousl up
