Sleep would not come to her. She tried to draw her mind away from such scenes, and think of the quiet hills. She listened to the beck, singing under the windows. Its voice was so clear that it seemed to be running across the kitchen floor by her bed. But it would only sing of the past, like a bard telling tales of the strenuous days of old. It was a lullaby for heroes, not for a weary old woman who could not sleep. She lay, shut in by her curtains, with her eyes fixed wide, seeing faces and hearing voices long since gone into the spirit-world. Outside, the moon was shining like a new silver crown. The fells lay white under its rays, for the snow had not yet melted from the uplands, though primroses were beginning to peep along sheltered spots of the beck-side. There was a touch of frost in the air, which gave a shimmer to the sky. The roof of Greystones glistened, and the five great sycamores, standing about the house, flung barred, black shadows across the sheep-pens that lay at the back of the farm, surrounded with one great wall ten feet high, built when robbers were frequent visitors. No other steading stood in the dale. The little village of High Fold lay two miles away, hidden by the trees of Cringel Forest. Behind Greystones the fellside ran up at a steep angle to Mickle Crags. It was not a cheerful place. The fell-folk said that a curse had been laid upon it, but when, and by whom, and for what offence, no one had ever heard. Yet many believed that the house would one day fall, or the beetling black crags come down upon it, and then would end the family of the Lynns, who had lived there for three hundred years. Lucy laid crossed straws on the threshold, as her mother had done, and her mother's mother, and hung horseshoes over the doors, but the house still kept its melancholy air. The lonely situation of the place had much to do with this impression, for Boar Dale was deep and wild and barren, surrounded by a mountain rampart, up which the sun must climb before it could send its kindly beams to dispel the mists that made it their home. Barbara and Lucy, aided by the village folk, had tried to persuade Mistress Lynn to leave the house and have another built in a more cheerful spot, but she would not listen to them. Had she not lived there for more than seventy years? Nothing had ever happened. There had been landslips, to be sure, upon the fells behind, but they had never fallen anywhere near the house. The beck was flooded every winter, but never got higher than the bottom step of the garden. What was there to fear? No; when she left Greystones, abandoned it to the bats and the owls, it would be when she was carried out with her feet up. Then Barbara and Lucy could do as they liked.