The twilight was deepening when we passed out of the stately old pile, and, bidding adieu to our pleasant, gossiping guide, turned to depart. The sun had gone down in the western heavens, and the mists were gathering thick among the surrounding hills, shrouding them in a dreamy obscurity; the lofty gables and broad squat tower clad in night's sober livery seemed to have gained additional massiveness and seen through the dun medium assumed a shadowy weird-like form; the old market-place seemed to have lulled itself into a still deeper quietude; a few of the villagers were lingering about their cottage doors, and as we passed on our way a light might now and then be seen glimmering from the casement of some humble dwelling, but there was nought to disturb the sense of calmness and repose. The stillness deepened as the light declined, and everything seemed to have become wrapped in slumber, save that now and then we could hear the faint gurgling of some tiny rill trickling down the hill side, or the baying of a watchdog at some distant moorland farm mingling with the subdued rumble of a railway train bearing its living freight across the Leven Sands. One by one the silent watchers came forth to begin their nightly vigil, guarding the slumbering earth as 'twere a sleeping child, and then the pale queen of night, rising slowly from behind the lonely fells, hung her silver crescent in the blue vault above, and spread a tender radiance on the tranquil world below. Keeping the dark woods of Holker on our right, a short half-hour's walk along a lonely road brought us to the little village of Cark, where-- Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country seat-- Cark Hall, an old gabled manor house, for generations the residence of the Curwens and the Rawlinsons. Cark is a station on the Furness line, and a few minutes after our arrival we were seated in the railway carriage and rolling along at a rapid rate beneath the wild limestone crags, over the wild estuary of the Leven, and through the devious windings of the valleys of Greenodd and Haverthwaite on the way to our comfortable resting place upon the shores of Windermere, bent on doing justice to the good fare the "Swan" at Newby Bridge affords, and with the mind stored with pleasant memories of quiet Cartmel and its grand old priory church. CHAPTER VI. DISLEY--A MAY DAY AT LYME--LYME HALL AND THE LEGHS. Lyme! What a host of memories are conjured up on the very mention of the name! What a world of legend and tradition; what tales of love and gramarye, of chivalry and romance gather round. To cross the threshold of the old mansion is to step back into the shade of vanished centuries; the spirit of the past breathes through the place; and as you pace the tapestried halls and panelled chambers visions of Crescy, of Poictiers, and of Agincourt float before the eye, for the lords of Lyme--men Stout of heart and steady of hand--