About a quarter of an hour before, a gentleman had appeared upon the moor, from the side of Sir John Slingsby's park. He had come up the hill as if he were walking for a wager, for there was something in the resistance of the acclivity to his progress, which made the vigorous spirit of youth and health resolute to conquer it triumphantly. When the feat was done, however, and the hill passed as if it had been a piece of level ground, Ned Hayward slackened his pace and looked about him, enjoyed to the full all that the wide expanse had of grand and fine, breathed freer in the high air, and let the spirit of solitary grandeur sink into his heart. He had none of the affected love of the picturesque and the sublime, which make the folks who assume the poetical so ridiculous. He was rather inclined to check what people call fine feelings than not; he was inclined to fancy himself, and to make other people fancy him a very commonplace sort of person, and he would not have gone into an ecstasy for the world, even at the very finest thing that the world ever produced; but he could not help, for the life of him, feeling every thing that was beautiful and great, more than he altogether liked, so that, when in society, he passed it off with a touch of persiflage, putting that sort of shield over what he felt to be a vulnerable point. Now, however, when he happened to be alone, he let Nature have her way, and holding his riding-whip by both ends, walked here and walked there, gazing at the prospect where he could get a sight of it, and looking to the right and the left as if not to let any point of loveliness escape him. His eyes soon fell upon the little tumulus already mentioned, with the sentinel fir-trees keeping guard upon the top, and thinking that there must be a good look-out from that high position, he walked slowly up and gazed over the park towards Tarningham. Suddenly, however, his eyes were withdrawn, as a cloud of white smoke came rolling up out of the sand-pit. "Ha, ha!" he said, "my friend Master Wolf lighting his fire I suppose."