Barbara Lynn: A Tale of the Dales and Fells

Barbara Lynn looked up the dale. Thundergay glimmered through the green twilight with his hoary head under the Pole star, and his feet in the wan waters of a tarn. His breath was the North wind. Barbara put up the shutters and turned to an old woman, who was propped against the pillows of a four-post bed. It stood in the full light of a turf fire, and looked like a ship with its sails furled. The Potter had made the new vessel after the pattern of the old, but the spirit of life which each held was different. The girl and her great-grandmother had the same wide brows, the same well-chiseled nose, and their eyes were blue. Barbara was tall beyond the usual height of her sex, and she carried her body with the grace of one accustomed to stand on giddy heights and climb perilous places. Her head was finely molded, and in proportion to her form. Peter Fleming, the miller's son, studying classics at Oxford, called her Athene, and said that a glance into her blue eyes, gave strength to his shoulders and courage to his heart. So had the old woman in the four-poster looked eighty years ago.