122 RAMBLE OVER DERBYSHIRE HILLS AND DALES, 
lies in having been the scene of the worthy Mompesson’s labours, 
and the burial-place of his dear wife, Catherine— 
** Where tears have rained, nor yet shall cease to flow.” 
—and many other victims of the plague. 
After a quiet stroll about the churchyard, looking at the famous 
dial over the porch, and taking a general survey, I joined my 
friends at the breakfast table, where we did ample justice to the 
eggs and bacon prepared for us. Thus primed for a good day’s 
work, we commenced in the churchyard, taking several views, 
including a good one of the cross. Our next picture was a view 
of Eyam, looking west. Mr. Wood, who had again joined us, 
showed us at the east end of the village, at the rear of his house, 
in a small meadow, two flat gravestones to the memory of the 
Darbys, victims of the plague. Continuing our walk eastward, we 
visited the Riley graves, the approach to which is by a: road 
branching off the Sheffield turnpike, about a quarter-of-a-mile 
from the village, through a plantation; the golden gorse, the 
graceful harebell, and the stately foxglove decorating the sandy 
banks on either side. Emerging from the shade of the trees into 
the open fields, ascending all the while, we soon came to the Riley 
graves. They stand on the steep slope of the hill, in the middle 
of a field, and are surrounded by a rude wall, in shape resembling 
a heart, which serves to protect them from the cattle ; nodding 
ferns and foxgloves springing up from the rank grass decorate this 
rude cemetery, where sleep the plague-stricken forms of John 
Hancock and his children. The view hence is extensive and 
beautiful, embracing a vast stretch of country right away to 
Masson, where it meets the horizon. 
Never shall I forget the stroll to the Riley graves, nor how we lay 
on the grass basking in the sunshine, while William Wood narrated 
in his straightforward, earnest, and simple manner, how the poor 
- mother buried her husband and family, as one after the other they 
died of the plague—how she was seen of the people in Stoney 
Middleton, to drag them one by one, by the aid of a towel tied 
to their feet, to the shallow graves she scooped out on the moor- 
