On this May day the brown moorland to the north of the Wall was thickly sprinkled with cotton-grass, its downy white heads giving a silvery sheen to an otherwise dull expanse. "Moss-troopers," the children call them, a white army invading from the north! Or, as a farmer's wife put it to me: "They bits o' flooff would mak' ye think we'd had a shower o' snaw." And so I came to Sewingshields, where the most fascinating part of the walk begins. [Illustration: Fig. 12. CONTOUR OF THE WALL RIDGE, FROM SEWING-SHIELD TO THE NINE NICKS OF THIRLWALL, AS SEEN FROM THE TOP OF BARCOMBE] Hitherto I had had to keep almost entirely to {109} Wade's Road. Now, good-bye to the high road, and hurrah for the heights! Not till we come to Birdoswald, full 13 miles ahead, is it necessary to follow a road again; and even then, after 3 or 4 miles of road, the path lies mainly through fields as far as Burgh-by-sands. The house at Sewingshields is now used as a shooting-box by Mr. Charles Straker of High Warden, near Hexham. It is built entirely of Roman stones, so it is not surprising that there is very little Wall left in its neighbourhood. The centurial stone, which Dr. Bruce mentions, has been taken out, and is preserved inside the house, where it was shown to me. The fir-plantation which now shelters the house from the north winds is only of comparatively recent planting. It must have been bleak indeed up there without this protection. The plantation is entered by a stile, just on the site of the Wall, and this is really where the crags begin. Let us sit a moment on this stile and look back the way we have come. The ditch of the Vallum and its triple mounds are very clearly marked on the right of Wade's Road, and the Wall-ditch is very plainly visible on the left. The low rays of the sun cast shadows which emphasize the form, and all round the eye can follow wave upon wave of undulating ground, right into the dim blue distance. {110} CHAPTER XI SEWINGSHIELDS TO HOUSESTEADS The path from the stile takes us, behind the house of Sewingshields, along the very line of the Wall, until we emerge from the trees by another stile, and find ourselves, as it were, on the very Roof of the World, with steep crags to the right, and long-drawn-out slopes to the left, and magnificent views all round. To the north lie what are called "The Wastes," with only scattered farms and sheep-moors; a desolate-looking country, I grant you, in dull weather, but a very fairyland as seen from the Wall on an ideal "Wall-day," when its vast expanse is flecked with blue cloud-shadows, reflecting the blue of the sky overhead, and when the little hills seem to "rejoice on every side." I think I love this view to the north, bare as it is, even more than the one to the south, over the fertile Tyne valley.