On getting clear of the town, we enter upon a pleasant rural highway that rises and falls in gentle undulations. Tall trees border the wayside, which, as we advance, grow thicker, until we reach a double line of spreading beeches that meet in an entanglement overhead, and form a long shady avenue, through which a pleasant vista is obtained. Now and then we meet a chance wayfarer and occasionally a sleepy-looking carter with his team, but the road is comparatively little frequented, and we almost wonder that with the limited traffic it does not become grass-grown. Though it is quiet now-a-days, it was lively enough in the old coaching times, when the “Red Rover” and the “Defiance” were in the zenith of their popularity, and the tootling of the guard’s bugle daily awoke the echoes to the inspiring notes of the “British Grenadiers,” for it was then the great highway between Manchester and the metropolis. But those days are changed, and our dream of the past is rudely dispelled by the shrill whistle of the “express” as it shoots along the edge of the Moss, leaving a long white pennon of steam in its wake. As we journey on we get agreeable glimpses of the country, and the varied character of the scenery adds to the charm. Below us on the left stretches a broad expanse of bog—Danes Moss, as it is called—commemorating some long-forgotten incursion of the wild Scandinavian hordes— When Denmark’s raven soared on high. On the outskirts of the town is an old farmstead, called Cophurst, on the site of which, as tradition sayeth, Raphael Hollinshead, the chronicler, resided three hundred years ago. Close by is Sutton, once the home of another Cheshire worthy—Sir Richard Sutton—“that ever famous knight and great patron of learning,” as King, in his “Vale Royal,” calls him, “one of the founders of Brazenose, in Oxford, where by his bounty many of Cheshire youth receive most worthy education.” The foreground is broken into picturesque inequalities, and in the rear rises a succession of swelling hills, part of the great Kerridge range—the stony barriers of the Peak country. Where the steep crags cut sharply against the eastern sky is Teg’s Nose, famed for its gritstone quarries. Further on, Shutling’s Low rears its cone-shaped peak to a height of 1,660 feet, and behind we catch sight of the breezy moor, on the summit of which stands that lonely hostelry, the Cat and Fiddle, the highest public-house, it is said, to be found in the kingdom. The great hill-slopes, though now almost bare of wood, once formed part of the great forest of Macclesfield, in which for generations the Davenports, as chief foresters, held the power of life and death over the robber bands who in the old times infested it, as well as the punishment of those who made free with the Earl’s venison; and they not only held but exercised their rights, as the long “Robber Roll” at Capesthorne still testifies. Though it has long been completely disafforested, the memory of it still lingers.