1 68 Saddle and Sir lorn. 



most elevated in the neighbourhood. Diddersley 

 Hill, with its sparse covering of whin and heather, 

 stands bleak and brown on the south, partially inter- 

 cepting the view towards Richmond, which is seven 

 miles away. There was once a castle on it, and as 

 you pass through a half-crumbling turreted archway, 

 you fancy that, even if it be only tenanted by the 

 owls and the bats, there must of a surety be one 

 still ; but not one stone is left upon another. You 

 soon find that your castle is in the air, and that you 

 have just passed through the mere portal to a moor. 

 Mr. Wetherell's holding was up two or three fields 

 to the left. The farm-buildings look desolate enough, 

 and exposed to all the fury of the west wind, but 

 there was a snugness and comfort in all the arrange- 

 ments, down to the canvas curtains and the whin 

 bushes on the gates, which proved, without even 

 seeing the result in the beautiful condition of the 

 cattle, that Mr. Wetherell and his trusty herdsman, 

 John Ward, had not battled with the elements in vain. 

 Lady Scarboro', an old dame of stately presence, 

 broad back, and prominent breast, and the roan Cosy 

 were the leading dowagers of those sheds, and the 

 roan Moss Rose, whose public life had been one 

 series of brilliant seconds to Nectarine Blossom, was 

 grouped in a Ward bouquet with her daughters 

 Ayrshire and the buxom Stanley Rose. John's lot? 

 was cast with her in troubled times hereafter, in the 

 " fatal walk she took through Holyhead ;" but now 

 she had only to lift her gay little head, and come 

 marching straight towards us with that massive Bride 

 Elect bosom, as if the Durham County wreath were 

 already her own. Next came the curly, white head 

 of that handsome bull Statesman, with those rare 

 lengthy quarters, and a 26-inch measurement from 

 the tail to the huggins. Much as Mr. Wetherell liked 

 this bull, he considers that his best was one by Young 

 Albion, from the dam of Rosanna, for which he would 



