It is a truism that there must be something wrong with a society in which the workers in a disagreeable and dangerous calling would not have it made less dangerous because the very danger gives them a claim to higher wages. They are used to the danger, and they are used to the wages; they would rather keep both! And who can blame them, things being as they are? Perhaps some day we may reach a condition of society in which every labour-saving device, or danger-averting discovery, will bless the whole of the community, and penalize none. This must surely come about in proportion as we learn to think of mankind as "one body," and to see that if one member suffers, every member is bound to suffer with it. There can be no real gain through another's loss. My miner-friend took my remarks very good-temperedly, and joined the groups seated on the ground as soon as we came up to them. Opposite the Filter-beds at Throckley, I turned off on the left, through an inviting-looking green {52} meadow, and, crossing the Vallum, sat down under some trees to rest. A man and a boy were busy chopping and carting logs of wood in the little plantation near me--another sign of the coal-strike. Soon after returning to the road I saw traces of another mile-castle. All this time the Wall-ditch can be traced on the right for the greater part of the way, and the Vallum on the left, at varying distances from the road, about 30 to 50 yards. At the top of the hill leading down to Heddon-on-the-Wall, both the Wall-ditch and the Vallum are a delight to the eye which has perhaps hitherto been tempted to see them as monotonous. Both ditches are cut through the sandstone rock. This was a specially good place for testing the shape of the Vallum-ditch, and sections made in 1893 proved it to be flat-bottomed and not V-shaped, just as it was later found to be along its whole length. A little way down the hill, by climbing into the field on the left, we can see the Wall, 5 or 6 courses high, and, built into it, an interesting circular chamber of unknown use, 7 feet in diameter. The Vallum-ditch is here only 35 yards to the south. As I entered Heddon, my thoughts began to turn towards refreshment, but the only available place for a meal looked so uninviting that I passed on. It was early-closing day in all the villages I had come through, so no shops had been open {53} after one o'clock, and I had let that hour slip by without knowing what a crucial hour it was. At Heddon a road turns off on the left, leading to Horsley and Corbridge. John Wesley was preaching near Horsley in 1755. It was a noted centre of Nonconformity, because it fulfilled the necessary condition for meeting-places (required then by law) of being "more than 5 miles from a parish church." Wesley writes in his diary: