The landlord, a hard-featured north countryman, half innkeeper, half sheep farmer, pointed up the valley. His deep voice had a friendly burr in it.
“You go straight on till you reach the head,” he said, “then take to the fell. Follow the ‘sheep-trod’ past the Crag. Directly you’re over the top you’ll strike the road.”
“A road up there!” exclaimed his customer incredulously.
“Aye,” was the steady reply. “The old Roman road. The same road,” he added, “the savages came down when they burst through the Wall and burnt everything right up to Lancaster——”
“They were held—weren’t they—at Lancaster?” asked the other, yet not knowing quite why he asked it.
“I don’t rightly know,” came the answer slowly. “Some say they were. But the old town has been that built over since, it’s hard to tell.” He paused a moment. “At Ambleside,” he went on presently, “you can still see the marks of the burning, and at the little fort on the way to Ravenglass.”
Holt strained his eyes into the sunlit distance, for he would soon have to walk that road and he was anxious to be off. But the landlord was communicative and interesting. “You can’t miss it,” he told him. “It runs straight as a spear along the fell top till it meets the Wall. You must hold to it for about eight miles. Then you’ll come to the Standing Stone on the left of the track——”
“The Standing Stone, yes?” broke in the other a little eagerly.
“You’ll see the Stone right enough. It was where the Romans came. Then bear to the left down another ‘trod’ that comes into the road there. They say it was the war-trail of the folk that set up the Stone.”
“And what did they use the Stone for?” Holt inquired, more as though he asked it of himself than of his companion.