The western sky was rich in the hues of the departing sun, which cast its declining beams upon village and homestead, thinly scattered in the fertile vale through which the Foss Way pursued its course.
But our travellers did not stay long to contemplate the beauty of the scene; they were yet ten miles from the hospitable roof where they had purposed spending the night, and they had overslept themselves so long at their noontide halt, that they found darkness growing apace, while their weary animals could scarcely advance farther.
“Is there no inn, no Christian dwelling near, where we may repose? Verily my limbs bend beneath me with fatigue,” said Father Cuthbert.
“There is no dwelling of Christian men nearer than the halls of the Thane of Rollrich, and we shall scarcely reach them for a couple of hours,” said Oswy, the serf.
“Thou art a Job’s comforter. What sayest thou, Anlac?”
“There are the remains of an old temple of heathen times not far from here, a little on the right hand of the road, but they say the place is haunted.”
“Then thither we will go. Peradventure it will prove a safe abiding place against wolves or evil men, and if there be demons we must even exorcise them.”
When they had emerged from the forest, they had, as we have seen, ascended the high tableland which formed the northern frontier of the territory of the Dobuni—passing over the very ground where, seven hundred years later, the troops of the King and the Parliament were arrayed against each other in deadly combat for the first time.
But at this remote period the country where the Celts had once lived, and whence their civilised descendants had been driven by the English, had become a barren moorland. Scarce a tree grew on the heights, but a wild common, with valley and hill alternating, much as on Dartmoor at the present day, stretched before the travellers, and was traversed by the old Roman trackway. Dreary indeed it looked in the darkening twilight; here and there some huge crag overtopped the road, and then the track lay along a flat surface. It was after passing some huge misshapen stones, which spoke of early Celtic worship, that suddenly, in the distance on the right, the ruined temple lay before them.