THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 



crumbling walls deep in moss, and their broken roofs 

 a mass of ferns, flowers, and wild grasses. Here, too, 

 you may see the old spinning galleries thrust out of the 

 low, dark, upper story, where, to save candle-light, 

 in the thrifty days of yore the women sat at their 

 wheels spinning the wool of the Herdwick sheep, 

 which range unfenced over the great ' stints ' to Mar- 

 dale. And the walk up the Hartsop beck, with fine 

 glimpses up its tributary to Raven crag, a short hour at 

 a leisured gait to the lake, is delightful on a fine day. 

 There are few more winsome becks, too, than this 

 in all Lakeland, leaping down, as it does, in sheer 

 cataracts of no mean height, from pool to pool, 

 fringed lightly with birch and rowan, and full of small 

 plump trout, easy to delude, but more arduous in 

 the getting than their size might justify for the very 

 roughness of the brook's bosky and resounding course. 

 One distraction which can be seen and heard nowhere 

 else outside Lakeland may easily be encountered by the 

 angler on Hayeswater, even as late as June. And 

 that is three, four, or even half a dozen truant 

 hounds of the Ullswater pack running foxes upon their 

 own account. This famous pack is kept in kennels, and 

 hunted regularly till about the middle of May the 

 late lambing season and predatory humours of the 

 mountain foxes, when the lambs are small, giving 

 the pack through April and May the busiest time of 

 their season. After this the hounds are boarded out 

 among the neighbouring farms, and it is the simplest 

 thing in the world for them to follow their natural 

 instinct, slip away to the hills having privily, no doubt, 

 made arrangements with their nearest neighbour and 



277 



