If we stand on the wind-swept top of Yeavering Bell, we are surrounded by the evidences of still more remote days, for the whole of the summit was once a fortified camp of the ancient Britons. A roughly-piled, but massive wall, now almost all broken down, surrounded it, and within its grass-grown oval are two additional walls, at the east and the west ends of the enclosure, and many hut-circles, evidences of the rude dwellings of our remote ancestors. Excavations here many years ago brought to light a jasper ball, some fragments of a coarse kind of pottery, and some oaken armlets. Evidently the enclosure on the summit was intended to be a last resort in time of danger, for traces of many huts are to be found outside its encircling wall, which is surrounded by a ditch and a low rampart of earth. At the east end, where the porphyry crag juts out from the hilltop to a height of about twenty feet, full advantage has been taken of this naturally strong position. Now, instead of advancing foes, the spreading heather climbs steadily up the sloping sides of this ancient stronghold, and invades the central enclosure at its will; a few hardy sheep that have wandered up here from the richer pastures below, and now and again a stray tourist, anxious to make acquaintance at first hand with one of the more famous of the Cheviot heights, and more than satisfied with the glorious view spread out before him, are all that disturb the brooding peace of its grassy solitudes. Up here the wind blows keenly around us with an exhilarating freshness in its breath, and we think regretfully of coats left behind at the shepherd’s hospitable dwelling, which, with the rest of the cottages clustering round the old farm house, lies sunning itself in the warm glow of the September afternoon, in the green fields at the foot of the sheltering hills. Looking southward now, up the stream, there is stretching away to the left the long ridge of Newton Tor, and away behind it Great Hetha and Little Hetha; while half-way down the vale the Colledge Water tumbles over the rocks at Hethpoole Linn (or Heathpool, as the modern rendering has it), breaking into amber spray deep down beneath overhanging trees and boulders and golden bracken.