Hood, and were well known to him and his band of “merrie men,” while his jovial chaplain, Friar Tuck, had his hermitage amongst their deep recesses.  Many woods round Sheffield still remained in the time of Mary Queen of Scots, who passed some portion of her imprisonment at the old Manor House, which was then a castellated mansion.  Visitors were now conducted up a narrow flight of stairs to a flat roof covered with lead, from which that unfortunate Queen had looked out over the hills and forests, and breathed the pure air as it passed over them.  But now all appeared to be fire and smoke, and the great works which belched them forth seemed a strange and marvellous sight to us after walking so long through such lonely districts.

[Illustration:  THE SMOKE OF SHEFFIELD.  “The district verging upon Sheffield was well known to the Romans as producing the best iron in the world.”]

Sheffield has a world-wide reputation for its cutlery and for its other productions in brass, iron, and steel, for the manufacture of which pure water of a particular variety was essential.  The town was well provided in that respect, for no less than five rivers flowed towards Sheffield from the Pennine range above.  From the finest steel all sorts of things were made, ranging from the smallest needle or steel pen up to the largest-sized gun or armour-plate.  It would no doubt have interested us greatly to look through one of the works, but such as we passed were labelled “No admittance except on business,” which we interpreted to mean that no strangers were allowed to enter, lest they might carry away with them the secrets of the business, so we walked slowly onward in the hope of reaching, before nightfall, our next great object of interest, “The Great Cavern and Castle of Peveril of the Peak.”  Passing along the Ecclesall Road, we saw, in nicely wooded enclosures, many of the houses of manufacturers and merchants, who, like ourselves in after life, left their men to sleep in the smoke while they themselves went to breathe the purer air above, for Ecclesall was at a fair elevation above the town.  But one gentleman whom we saw assured us that, in spite of the heavy clouds of smoke we had seen, the town was very healthy, and there was more sunshine at Sheffield than in any other town in England.

Shortly afterwards we came to a finger-post where a road turned off towards Norton and Beauchief Abbey.  Norton was the village where the sculptor Chantrey, of whom, and his works, we had heard so much, was born, and the monument to his memory in the old church there was an attraction to visitors.  Chantrey was a man of whom it might safely be said “his works do follow,” for my brother, who always explored the wild corners of the country when he had the opportunity, was once travelling in Wales, and told a gentleman he met that he intended to stay the night at the inn at the Devil’s Bridge.  This was not the Devil’s Bridge we had crossed so recently at Kirkby Lonsdale, but a much more picturesque one, which to visit at that time involved a walk of about thirteen miles in the mountainous region behind Aberystwyth.