Had he clung to any hope that the black cloud that appeared to be hanging over him would not, after all, envelop him?  Alas! that last vestige of hope must leave him.  The paper was a warrant for his own arrest on a charge of treason.  It had been issued at the court of the high constable at Carlisle, and set forth that Ralph Ray had conspired to subvert the government of his sovereign while a captain in the trained bands of the rebel army of the “late usurper.”  It was signed and countersigned, and was marked for the service of James Wilson, King’s agent.  It was dated too; yes, two days before Wilson’s death.

All was over now; this was the beginning of the end; the shadow had fallen.  By that paradox of nature which makes disaster itself less hard to bear than the apprehension of disaster, Ralph felt relieved when he knew the worst.  There was much of the mystery still unexplained, but the morrow would reveal it; and Ralph lay down to sleep, and rose at daybreak, not with a lighter, but with an easier heart.

When he took up his shepherd’s staff that morning, he turned towards Fornside Fell.  Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half faced the purple heights of Blencathra.  It was brant from side to side, and as rugged as steep.  Ralph did not ascend the screes, out went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders.  The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but perilous causeway.  The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the frost.  It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross.  The hardy black sheep of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind carried their call away until it died off into a moan.

When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him.  Yes, he was somewhat too high.  He began to descend.  The rock’s head sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man’s voice singing.  It was Sim’s voice; and here was Sim’s cave.  It was a cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a man to pass in.  Great bowlders stood above and about it.

The sun could never shine into it.  A huge rock stood alone and apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an iceberg had perched it there.  The dog would have bounded in upon Sim where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look.  Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in that Solitary place.  The weird ditty suited well with both.

     She lean’d her head against a thorn,
      The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa’;
     And there she has her young babe born,
      And the lyon shall be lord of a’.

     She’s howket a grave by the light o’ the moon,
      The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa’;
     And there she’s buried her sweet babe in,
      And the lyon shall be lord of a’.