"
[Illustration: CHATSWORTH HOUSE.]
We now climbed up the opposite side of the dale, and continued on the
moorland road for a few miles, calling at the "Flagg Moor Inn" for tea.
By the time we had finished it was quite dark, and the landlady of the
inn did her best to persuade us to stay there for the night, telling us
that the road from there to Ashbourne was so lonely that it was possible
on a dark night to walk the whole distance of fourteen miles without
seeing a single person, and as it had been the Great Fair at Newhaven
that day, there might be some dangerous characters on the roads. When
she saw we were determined to proceed farther, she warned us that the
road did not pass through any village, and that there was only a
solitary house here and there, some of them being a little way from the
road. The road was quite straight, and had a stone wall on each side all
the way, so all we had got to do was to keep straight on, and to mind we
did not turn to the right or the left along any of the by-roads lest we
should get lost on the moors. It was not without some feeling of regret
that we bade the landlady "Good night" and started out from the
comfortable inn on a pitch-dark night.
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