Tales of the Ridings | Page 8

these failed him he directed his homeward course by
observing how the cotton-grass or withered sedge swayed in the wind.
Except when wrapped in snow, the high moors of the Pennine range
present for eight months of the year a harmony of sober colours, in
which the grey of the rocks, the bleached purple of the heather blossom
and the faded yellows and browns of bent and bracken overpower the
patches of green herbage. But twice in the course of the short summer
the moors burst into flower and array themselves with a bravery with
which no lowland meadow can compare. The first season of bloom is
in early June, when the chalices or the cloud-berry and the nodding
plumes of the cottongrass spring from an emerald carpet of bilberry and
ling. These two flowers are pure white, and the raiment of the moors is
that of a bride prepared to meet her bridegroom, the sun. By July the
white has passed, and the moors have assumed once more a sombre hue.
But August follows, and once again they burst into flower. No longer is
their vesture white and virginal; now they bloom as a matron and a
queen, gloriously arrayed in a seamless robe of purple heather.
Such were the surroundings amid which Peregrine Ibbotson had spent
three quarters of a century, and he asked for nothing better than that he
should end his days as a Yorkshire shepherd. But now a rumour arose
that there was a project on foot to enclose the moors. The meadows and
pastures in the valley below had been enclosed for more than
half-a-century, and this had been brought about without having
recourse to Act of Parliament. The fields had been enclosed by private
commission; the farmers had agreed to refer the matter to expert
arbitrators and their decisions had been accepted without much
grumbling. The dalesmen were proud of their freehold property and
were now casting their eyes upon the moorland pastures above. They
agreed that the sheep would crop the grass more closely if confined by
walls within a certain space, and the fees paid to the shepherd for his
labour would be saved; for each farmer would be able to look after his

own sheep. But what weighed with them most was the pride of
individual possession compared with which the privilege of sharing
with their neighbours in communal rights over the whole moor seemed
of small account. Moreover, stones for walling were plentiful, and the
disbanding of the armies after the French wars had made labour cheap.
At first Peregrine refused to believe the rumour; the moors, he argued
with himself, had always been commons and commons they must
remain. Yet the rumour persisted and gradually began to work like
poison in his mind. He was too proud to mention the matter to the
farmers when they came up for the autumn salving of the sheep, but a
constraint in their manner deepened his suspicions, and all through the
winter a pall of gloom enshrouded his mind like the pall of gloom on
the moors themselves. Spring brought dark foreboding to yet darker
certainty. From his mountain eyrie Peregrine could now see bands of
men assembling in the village below. They were wallers, attracted
thither by the prospect of definite work during the summer months, and
on Easter Monday a start was made. Peregrine watched them from the
fells, and as he saw them carrying the blocks of limestone in their
hands they seemed to him like an army of stinging ants which had been
disturbed in their ant-hill and were carrying their eggs to another spot.
Slowly but surely the work advanced. At first the walls took a beeline
track up the hillside, but when they reached the higher ground, where
scars of rock and patches of reedy swamp lay in their path, their
progress became serpentine. But whether straight or winding, the white
walls mounted ever upwards, and Peregrine knew that his doom was
sealed. The moors which Ibbotsons had shepherded for two hundred
years would soon pass out of his charge; the most ancient of callings,
which Peregrine loved as he loved life itself, would be his no more; his
mountain home, which had stood the shock of an age-long battle with
the storms, would pass into the hand of some dalesman's hind, and he
would be forced to descend to the valley and end his days in one or
other of the smoky towns where his remaining sons were living.
There was no human being to whom he could communicate his
thoughts, yet the pent-up anguish must find outlet somehow, lest the

heart-strings should snap beneath the strain. It was therefore to his
sheepdog, Rover, that he unburdened his mind, as the dog lay with its
paws