and we can hear the distant cough of cattle, which are quite invisible in the gathering twilight. A farmer in his cart drives slowly by up the steep lane, and then the silence becomes more complete than before, and the fells become blue-black against a sky which is just beginning to be spangled with the palest of stars. They seem to flicker so much that the soft evening breeze threatens to blow them out altogether. The dale narrows up at its highest point, but the road is enclosed between gray walls the whole of the way over the head of the valley. A wide view of Langstrothdale and upper Wharfedale is visible when the road begins to drop downwards, and to the east Buckden Pike towers up to his imposing height of 2,302 feet. We shall see him again when we make our way through Wharfedale, but we could go back to Wensleydale by a mountain-path that climbs up the side of Cam Gill Beck from Starbottom, and then, crossing the ridge between Buckden Pike and Tor Mere Top, it goes down into the wild recesses of Waldendale. So remote is this valley that wild animals, long extinct in other parts of the dales, survived there until almost recent times. When we have crossed the Ure again, and taken a last look at the Upper Fall from Aysgarth Bridge, we betake ourselves by a footpath to the main highway through Wensleydale, turning aside before reaching Redmire in order to see the great castle of the Scropes at Bolton. It is a vast quadrangular mass, with each side nearly as gaunt and as lofty as the others. At each corner rises a great square tower, pierced, with a few exceptions, by the smallest of windows. Only the base of the tower at the north-east corner remains to-day, the upper part having fallen one stormy night in November, 1761, possibly having been weakened during the siege of the castle in the Civil War. We go into the courtyard through a vaulted archway on the eastern side. Many of the rooms on the side facing us are in good preservation, and an apartment in the south-west tower, which has a fireplace, is pointed out as having been used by Mary Queen of Scots when she was imprisoned here after the Battle of Langside in 1568. It was the ninth Lord Scrope who had the custody of the Queen, and he was assisted by Sir Francis Knollys. Mary, no doubt, found the time of her imprisonment irksome enough, despite the magnificent views over the dale which her windows appear to have commanded; but the monotony was relieved to some extent by the lessons in English which she received from Sir Francis, whom she describes as ‘her good schoolmaster.’ While still a prisoner, Mary addressed to him her first English letter, which begins: ‘Mester Knoleis, I heve sum neus from Scotland’; and half-way through she begs that he will excuse her writing, seeing that she had ‘neuur vsed it afor,’ and was ‘hestet.’ The letter concludes with ‘thus, affter my commendations, I prey God heuu you in his kipin. Your assured gud frind, MARIE R.’ Then comes a