CHAPTER I.THE CITY OF WYTHBURN.
Tar-ry woo', tar-ry woo', Tar-ry woo' is ill to spin: Card it weel, card it weel, Card it weel ere you begin.

_Old Ballad._ The city of Wythburn stood in a narrow valley at the foot of Lauvellen, and at the head of Bracken Water.

It was a little but populous village, inhabited chiefly by sheep farmers, whose flocks grazed on the neighboring hills.

It contained rather less than a hundred houses, all deep thatched and thick walled.

To the north lay the mere, a long and irregular water, which was belted across the middle by an old Roman bridge of bowlders.