the ancient seat of the Pudsays, whose effigies in the parish church tell a long tale of predominance in this Craven country. The Hall is the oldest house in the district, and intimately associated with the wanderings of Henry VI. after his defeat at the battle of Hexham, for the Pudsay of that day gave the hapless king a safe asylum for some weeks. The panelled room he occupied is still preserved, and a spring in the grounds still bears his name. Yet more to the point, a glove, a boot, and a spoon, relics of his sojourn with them, remained in the family till they lost Bolton in the middle of the last century, and are still preserved. A beautifully wooded cliff rising high above the broad rapids of the Ribble near the house has great local notoriety under the name of _Pudsay's Leap_. For tradition tells how the owner of Bolton, in the reign of Elizabeth, had acquired great favour at Court, but having discovered silver on the estate proceeded to set up a mint of his own, thereby bringing down upon his head the rough arm of the law. Escaping on horseback from the sheriff and his party, this greatly daring Pudsay is said to have baffled pursuit by leaping his horse down this wooded precipice above the Ribble, and, thence riding to London at incredible speed, thrown himself at the feet of the Queen, with whom he had been a favourite. Confessing his crime, he extracted a pardon from a monarch notoriously exacting where the precious metals were concerned. An old local ballad celebrates the daring Pudsay's feat: Out of the gates himself he flung, Ranistire scaur before him lay; Now for a leap or I shall be hung, Now for a leap quo' bold Pudsay. As the river sweeps on past Clitheroe, which is just in Lancashire, the long ridge ending in the uplifted gable end of Pendle Hill, celebrated of old for its witches, rises finely on the east, and the moors of the forest of Bowland, or Bolland, are equally conspicuous on the west. The large tributary of the Hodder, after a beautiful and devious course through the last-named moors, swells the Ribble considerably below Clitheroe, whose ruined castle keep, lifted high above the town, strikes an appropriate note in the centre of a noble scene. The Calder coming down from Burnley and more tainted sources joins the Ribble on the opposite bank, and henceforward the latter loses in great measure the charm of unpolluted waters and a pastoral atmosphere among the gathering signs of industrial life that mark its course to Preston.