Midway we came into full view of a lonely ruined castle standing on the crest of a gently rising hill, and surrounded by a lawnlike meadow running down to the road. The ragged towers and crumbling walls stood gray and forbidding against a background of giant trees, and these were sharply outlined against the bluest of English skies. We learn later that it is Chartley Castle, which stands in a tract of ancient forest and heath land, upon which roams a herd of wild white cattle similar to those of Chillingham. Over Chartley broods the somber memory of its one-time owner, the Earl of Ferrars, who in a fit of anger murdered a steward and was hanged two centuries ago for the crime at Tyburn. It was his whim to be dressed in his wedding garments and hanged with a silken cord. He was stoic to the last and would say no more than he expressed in the misanthropic lines: "In doubt I lived, in doubt I die, Yet stand prepared the vast abyss to try, And undismayed expect eternity." A grim old tale that fits well with the lonely fortress, standing in unguarded ruin in the mysterious forest about it. [Illustration: RUINS OF CHARTLEY CASTLE, DERBYSHIRE.] But the day was waning and we hastened on to Uttoxeter, a town to which Nathaniel Hawthorne made a pilgrimage nearly half a century ago, attracted by the fact that it is the birthplace of Dr. Samuel Johnson. He regretted that there was no memorial of the great author in his native town, but this has since been supplied. An ugly fountain has been erected on the traditional spot where Johnson did penance, as he described in a letter to Miss Seward on his return from Uttoxeter: "Fifty years ago, madam, on the day, I committed a breach of filial piety which has ever since lain heavy on my mind, and has not till this day been expiated. My father ... had long been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market and opening a stall of his books during that day. Confined to his bed by indisposition, he requested me, this time fifty years, to visit the market in his place. But, madam, my pride prevented me from doing my duty and I gave my father a refusal. To do away the sin of disobedience, this day I went in a post-chaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather."