From the summit of Cross Fell at certain seasons the mysterious and terrible "helm wind" blows. When no breeze disturbs the air, and when, over all the country round, there is a clear and bright sky, a line of strangely tortured and curving clouds will form itself along the ridge of the mountain. Then the shepherds will hie to where shelter may be found, for they know that a wind will soon be blowing before which no human creature can stand upright, and that may uproot trees, and unroof houses, and carry dismay into the valleys far below. It was the fiends holding revel, said the early inhabitants of these regions; wherefore St. Augustine erected a cross on the highest part of the fell, collecting his monks around him, and holding a religious service there, whereby if the fiends were made less harmful they were by no means dispossessed. The nearest inhabited place is Garrigill, which is a prominent object in the valley as one ascends the moor from Alston. A Cumberland village is a series of white gleaming spots against the hillside--a collection of whitewashed walls and grey-blue roofs of stone. This of Garrigill is like so many others, except as to the height at which it has been built, and its bright contrast with the gloom of its surroundings. There is a pleasant shadow of trees about its housetops. There is a village inn, and a village green, and a village well. The young river flows past quickly, merrily, with the music of numerous little falls. The people of these hill regions are miners for the most part. Lead was worked in these mountain sides at times so far back as the Roman occupation of Britain, and some of the miners, if they had kept a record of such things, might show a pedigree longer than that of those whose ancestors were engaged in Senlac fight. Their chief quarters are at Alston and at Allenheads, but their bothies are scattered about these moors. The town of Alston is four miles below Garrigill. It is a pretty, white-looking town, high up on the slope of the moors. Of its two principal streets one is parallel with the river Nent, and the other with the South Tyne, the two streams here joining to make a fairly considerable river. At Alston we are again on the track of St. Augustine's footsteps. He may even have founded a place of worship here, and it is in keeping with the tradition of his having Christianised Cumberland that the church should bear his name. [Illustration: FEATHERSTONE CASTLE.] [Illustration: FEATHERSTONE BRIDGE.] White Alston, with the wild brown moors beyond it, stands between the broad, open desolateness of the mountain region and a lovely district in which the South Tyne laughs under the threading branches of ancient woods, or broadens out by sunny haughs, as if to rest itself between strife and strife.