Three of us walked back from Bewcastle by the Maiden Way; we kept losing the way and finding it again; but we struck all the landmarks, and it finally brought us out, "according to plan," just above Birdoswald. We passed Side Fell, the highest point hereabouts, and came to the Beacon, where the ruins of what was formerly supposed to be a Roman watch-tower are quite unmistakable. In Dr. Bruce's third edition there is a lovely picture of it, with, prominently in the foreground, "a very {238} human incident," as the newspapers love to say. A brave, top-hatted cavalier, with umbrella raised high above his head, is defending a clinging companion in crinoline skirts from three meek-looking cows, whose tails are curved like fish-hooks over their backs! What a romance lies hidden there! When I saw it, I felt how much I had failed in not peopling the solitudes of the Wall in my pictures! But then, to me, the loneliness is half the charm, and three-quarters of the character. We crossed Spadeadam Waste--such a fascinating name, which takes us back to the very gates of Eden!--and we came to Spadeadam farm-house, where an adamantine old lady in a sunbonnet refused our appeal for milk or tea. Haymaking was in full swing, and she really had more than she could do already, I am sure. Then we crossed the King Water, by stepping-stones, and over the top of the next hill Gilsland came into view. {239} CONCLUSION And so I must take leave of the Wall; and Wall must make its exit from this little stage. "Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so, And, being done, thus Wall away doth go." (_Midsummer Night's Dream._) It has not been possible within the limits of this book to say all I should have liked. The romance of the Museums I have left untouched, with their pathetic relics of the loves, the vanities, the hopes and fears, the sufferings, and the victories of the great people who colonized our land so many years ago. There is abundant proof that there was some measure of family life enjoyed by the Romans on the wild outposts of the Wall. The officers had their wives with them; children were born (and lost); sorrowing husbands have left memorials to their wives; disconsolate wives lament, on stone, their husbands. And trinkets there are in plenty: gold, and silver, and bronze, inlaid with stones; and beautiful {240} enamel work. At Chesters there is a jet ring inscribed with a monogram, and the legend: QVIS · SEPA · MEVM · ET · TVVM · DVRANTE · VITA "Who shall separate me and thee during life?" Has mankind changed much in eighteen hundred years? Only one definitely Christian inscription has been found, and that is a British tombstone. Nearly all the inscribed stones show signs of having been purposely smashed; possibly by "Christian" Britons, who thought later that by that means they were doing God service.