"Sweetly blows the haw and the rowan-tree, Wild roses speck our thickets sae briery; Still, still will our walk in the green-wood be-- Oh, Jeanie! there's nothing to fear ye." HOGG'S BALLADS. On the following morning they entered Westmoreland; and as they approached the term of their journey, advancing the more rapidly as they entered the wilder and more sparsely-populated regions toward the lakes and fells, where the castellated dwellings of the knightly nobles and the cloisters of the ecclesiastical lords became few and far between, they reached Kendal, then a small hamlet, with a noble castle and small priory, before noon; and, making no stay, pressed onward to the shores of Windermere, which they struck, not far from the scattered cottages and small chapel of ease, tended by two aged brothers from Kendal, known then, as it is now, not having grown much since that day, as the village of Bowness. On the lake, moored at a rude pier, lay a small but gayly-decorated yacht, or galley, with the arms of Sir Yvo de Taillebois emblazoned on its foresail, and a gay streamer flaunting from its topmast, awaiting the arrival of the party, which had been announced to their vassals by a harbinger sent forward from Bolton Abbey. And here the nobles, with their immediate train, separated from the bulk of the party, the former going on board the galley, and crossing the pellucid waters of the beautiful lake to Sir Yvo's noble castle, which lay not a mile from the strand, embosomed in a noble chase, richly-wooded with superb oak and ash forests, midway of the gentle and green valley between the lake and the western mountains, over which his demesnes extended, while the escort, with the horse-boys, grooms, and servitors, took the longer and more difficult way around the head of the lake--a circuit of some twenty miles--over the sites of the modern towns of Ambleside and Hawkshead, the castle lying in Cumberland, although the large estates of De Taillebois extended for many miles on both sides of the water, and in both counties, being the last grand feudal demesne on the south side of the mountains. Further to the north, again, where the country spread out into plains beyond Keswick, toward Penrith and Carlisle, and the untamed Scottish borders, there were again found vast feudal demesnes, the property of the Lords of the Marches, the Howards, the Percys, the Umfravilles, and others, whose prowess defended the rich lowlands of York and Lancaster from the incursions of the Border Riders.