Here he ordered luncheon, to be ready at two, and then set out with his young people to walk through the town.
They climbed the hill and viewed the castle, now fallen from its ancient glory of a royal fortress—not into ruin, but into deeper degradation as the county jail. But the donjon keep, King John’s Tower, and John of Gaunt’s Gate remain as of old.
They next visited the old parish church of St. Mary’s, where they saw some wonderful stained glass windows, brass statuary, and oak carvings of a date to which the memory of man reached not back.
They could only gaze upon the outside of the cotton and silk factories and the iron foundries before the clock in the church tower struck two, and they returned to the hotel for lunch.
At three o’clock they took the train for Angleton.
Their course now lay eastward through many a mile of the manufacturing districts, and then entered a moorland, waste and sparsely inhabited, stretching eastward to the range of mountains known in local phraseology as “England’s Backbone.”
It was six o’clock on a warm June afternoon when the slow train stopped at a little, lonely station, in the midst of a moor, where there was not another house anywhere in sight.
Here our travelers left their compartment and came out upon the platform, carpetbags in hand; and the train went on its way.
Our party paused on the platform, looking about them.
On their right hand stood the station, a small, strong building of stone with two rooms and a ticket office. Behind that the moor stretched out in unbroken solitude to the horizon.