.

AT SUNRISE ON THE RAISE.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.
At sunrise the following morning two men walked through Wythburn towards the hillock known as the Raise, down the long road that led to the south.

The younger man had attained to the maturity of full manhood.

Brawny and stalwart, with limbs that strode firmly over the ground; with an air of quiet and reposeful power; with a steadily poised head; with a full bass voice, soft, yet deep; with a face that had for its utmost beauty the beauty of virile strength and resolution, softened, perhaps, into tenderness of expression by washing in the waters of sorrow,--such, now, was Ralph Ray.

Over a jerkin he wore the long sack coat, belted and buckled, of the dalesmen of his country.