When he took up his shepherd's staff that morning, he turned towards Fornside Fell. Rising out of the Vale of Wanthwaite, the fell half faced the purple heights of Blencathra. It was brant from side to side, and as rugged as steep. Ralph did not ascend the screes, out went up by Castle Rock, and walked northwards among the huge bowlders. The frost lay on the loose fragments of rock, and made a firm but perilous causeway. The sun was shining feebly and glinting over the frost. It had sparkled among the icicles that hung in Styx Ghyll as he passed, and the ravine had been hard to cross. The hardy black sheep of the mountains bleated in the cold from unseen places, and the wind carried their call away until it died off into a moan.
When Ralph got well within the shadow cast on to the fell from the protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him. Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a man to pass in. Great bowlders stood above and about it.
The sun could never shine into it. A huge rock stood alone and apparently unsupported near its mouth, as though aeons long gone by an iceberg had perched it there. The dog would have bounded in upon Sim where he sat and sang at his work, but Ralph checked him with a look. Inexpressibly eerie sounded the half-buried voice of the singer in that Solitary place. The weird ditty suited well with both.
She lean'd her head against a thorn,
The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'';
And there she has her young babe born,
And the lyon shall be lord of a''.
She's howket a grave by the light o' the moon,
The sun shines fair on Carlisle wa'';
And there she's buried her sweet babe in,
And the lyon shall be lord of a''.
The singer stopped, as though conscious of the presence of a listener, and looking up from where he sat on a round block of timber, cutting up a similar block into firewood, he saw Ralph Ray leaning on his staff near the cave's mouth. He had already heard of the sorrow that had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite. With an unspeakable look of sympathy in his wild, timid eyes, as though some impulse of affection urged him to throw his arms about Ralph and embrace him, while some sense of shame impelled him to kneel at his feet, Sim approached him, and appeared to make an effort to speak. But he could say nothing. Ralph understood his silence and was grateful for it. They went into the cave, and sat down in the dusk.
“You can tell me all about it, now,” Ralph said, without preamble of any sort, for each knew well what lay closest at the other's heart. “He is gone now, and we are here together, with none but ourselves to hear.”
“I knew you must know it one day,” Sim said, “but I tried hard to hide it from you—I did, believe me, I tried hard—I tried, but it was not to be.”
“It is best so,” Ralph answered; “you must not bear the burden of guilt that is not your own.”
“I'm no better than guilty myself,” said Sim. “I don't reckon myself innocent; not I. No, I don't reckon myself innocent.”
“I think I understand you, Sim; but you were not guilty of the deed?”