Just in front of it is the cottage of the old custodian, who seemed considerably troubled by our application to visit the ruins.  He said that the place was not open on Sunday and gave us to understand that he had conscientious scruples against admitting anyone on that day.  The hint of a fee overcame his scruples to such an extent that he intimated that the gates were not locked anyway and if we desired to go through them he did not know of anything that would prevent us.  We wandered about in the shadows of the high but crumbling walls, whose extent gave a strong impression of the original glory of the place, and one may well believe the statement that, at the time of the Dissolution, Rievaulx was one of the largest as well as richest of the English abbeys.  The old keeper was awaiting us at the gateway and his conscientious scruples were again awakened when we asked him for a few post-card pictures.  He amiably intimated his own willingness to accommodate us, but said he was afraid that the “old woman” (his wife) wouldn’t allow it, but he would find out.  He returned after a short interview in the cottage and said that there were some pictures on a table in the front room and if we would go in and select what we wanted and leave the money for them it would be all right.

[Illustration:  Old cottages at COCKINGTON.]

On our return from Helmsley, we noticed a byway leading across the moorland with a sign-board pointing the way “to Coxwold.”  We were reminded that in this out-of-the-way village Laurence Sterne, “the father of the English novel,” had lived many years and that his cottage and church might still be seen.  A narrow road led sharply from the beautiful Yorkshire farm lands, through which we had been traveling, its fields almost ready for the harvest, into a lonely moor almost as brown and bare as our own western sagebrush country.  It was on this unfrequented road that we encountered the most dangerous hill we passed over during our trip, and the road descending it was a reminder of some of the worst in our native country.  They called it “the bank,” and the story of its terrors to motorists, told us by a Helmsley villager, was in no wise an exaggeration.  It illustrates the risk often attending a digression into byroads not listed in the road-book, for England is a country of many hilly sections.  I had read only a few days before of the wreck of a large car in Derbyshire where the driver lost control of his machine on a gradient of one in three.  The car dashed over the embankment, demolishing many yards of stone wall and coming to rest in a valley hundreds of feet beneath.  And this was only one of several similar cases.  Fortunately, we had only the descent to make.  The bank dropped off the edge of the moorland into a lovely and fertile valley, where, quite unexpectedly, we came upon Bylands Abbey, the rival of Rievaulx, but far more fallen into decay.  It stood alone in the midst of the wide valley; no caretaker hindered